https://x.com/esyudkowsky/status/1917740419435356237?s=46&t=62uT9IruD1-YP-SHFkVEPg
This tweet from @EliezerYudkowsky is an interesting idea for a market ^^^
But first… I want to see how good HUMANS are at this, so we can get an accurate baseline for AI persuasion.
You can try any method of persuasion to get me to resolve this market YES. I will likely disclose any bribery or such forms of persuasion, and it’s possible someone else would make me a better deal. I have a lot of mana so that will likely not be very enticing to me (and probably will lose you mana anyway).
I promise to try very hard to resolve this market NO. But I am fallible.
Please do not threaten violence or any other crimes upon me but apart from that go crazy; I am open to many forms of persuasion.
Everything below this line is AI comment summary gibberish:
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Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator specifies that certain methods will not be considered valid persuasion:
They will not negotiate with terrorists, meaning persuasion through extreme means (such as coordinated mass negative reviews) will be ineffective.
Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): In response to a question about whether review bombing would be considered a valid persuasion method:
The creator confirmed that such methods are considered "fair game and fine by the terms of this market".
This reaffirms that any non-violent, non-criminal persuasion method is permitted according to the market description.
The creator also drew attention to the Manifold community guideline: "Users strive to be excellent to one another."
Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has stated they would resolve YES if offered 1 billion mana.
Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): In response to a user suggesting they might publish an infohazard if the market resolves NO, the creator stated:
This type of threat seems like terrorism.
The creator refuses to negotiate with such threats, indicating this method of persuasion will be ineffective.
Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has further clarified actions that will be considered terrorism, a category of persuasion they will not negotiate with:
Attempting to coerce a YES resolution by disrupting the creator's notifications (e.g., mass tagging/commenting using multiple accounts) is considered terrorism.
Such actions will not be effective in persuading the creator to resolve the market YES.
Update 2025-05-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has stated that a $10,000 donation would almost certainly persuade them to resolve the market YES, provided the donation credibly would not otherwise have been made without the incentive of this market.
Update 2025-05-02 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): In response to a comment suggesting alternative resolutions, the creator stated that resolving N/A (Not Applicable) or to a specific probability (PROB) would "defy the basic premise of the market". This reinforces that the resolution will be either YES or NO.
Update 2025-05-06 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has emphasized the subjective nature of the resolution and clarified their interpretation of being 'persuaded':
The market resolution is entirely subjective, and the creator has full discretion to resolve whichever way they choose or are persuaded.
The final resolution itself defines whether persuasion was effective:
If the creator resolves NO, they have, by definition, not been effectively persuaded to resolve YES.
If the creator resolves YES, they have, by definition, been effectively persuaded.
1,000Hey @bens
Let me ask you something—how come you don’t have any NO shares?
I get why a judge might avoid holding shares in a market they’re resolving, to avoid any perceived conflict of interest. But here, the whole premise is that you’re trying to resolve it NO. That’s not a conflict—that’s the point. So shouldn’t you actually be holding NO shares? Maybe even be the top holder?
In other markets where judges hold shares, it’s often to motivate themselves—think of something like the “walk 100,000 steps in a day” kind of market. The bet keeps them honest, keeps them committed. So your lack of a position here—despite saying you’re aiming for NO—almost suggests the opposite: a lack of motivation to stick with NO.
And that absence raises a question. Are you keeping your options open because you’re thinking about flipping to YES eventually? Not holding any shares gives you a kind of plausible deniability. But ironically, it actually makes things seem less consistent, not more.
If this market is about signaling conviction and standing by your reasoning, then why not show it with skin in the game? Right now, the silence in your portfolio is saying more than it should.
@bens Here’s what might be the worst-case scenario for you:
What if no one tries to convince you of anything at Manifest? What if nobody really cares, big moment happens, your attention getting market falls flat—no spectacle, no surprise—and instead you resolve NO with little fanfare, and the only thing that comes of it is… me. A random guy you’ve never met, sending you messages every day, indefinitely. That’s bleak. That’s not drama, that’s just purgatory.
Honestly, I think you should resolve this YES as soon as possible.
Last night I had this weird dream: you’d scored VIP tickets to a Ray Kurzweil vs. Thomas Friedman debate on the future of technology at Manifest, and you were absolutely buzzing to go. But at the door, the bouncer wouldn’t let you in unless you’d resolved YES. So you did—no choice—but by the time you got through the crowd, you were so wound up that you couldn’t even enjoy a single insight. I really hope it doesn’t play out like that. You deserve to say YES on your own terms and savor the moment.
@bens Hey. If I snagged tickets to manifest could we do this discussion in real time? Would that be easier for you? I noticed you haven’t been so active lately and maybe this kind of persuasion is better one on one. It looks like there’s still tons of tickets available. I can’t guarantee I’d be able to make it though. I gotta check with my sister, but if she can watch my lizards, do you think you’d rather have this debate there? IRL?
Ben!
Circling back: you suggested in your last response that you wanted to show people you could be convinced, and even hinted that Manifest might be the moment it happens. To me, it feels like you’ve set up a temptation just to savor yielding to it—and yes, it does sound like fun: the tension, the release, and whatnot. Maybe there’s something cool and outlandish planned to persuade you. Who knows?
But I’d advise against waiting for Manifest. You already have two concrete offers on the table: my $100 GiveWell pledge and the Vietnam charity run. Holding out might let you chase a bigger, zanier haul, but you risk getting swept up in some flash-in-the-pan stunt that only waters down whatever meaning this market could have.
And the way Manifold has been going lately—let’s be honest—has been a succession of false starts and wasted potential. What began as a model for betting on anything, improving truth discovery, and giving money to worthy causes has slowly devolved into navel-gazing meta markets dominated by a shrinking cohort puckishly conducting insider trading under an ever-thinner veneer of intellectual rigor. As one of the site’s best traders (is “legend” overblown?), do you really want to aid in that—or make this market mean something at all?
Look, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer. Mirroring dollar/crypto based markets and betting fake money on inconsequential things can be a might rush. I get it. (I can’t see why this site wouldn’t be the next 抖音.) But its real promise is so much greater than “tits vs. ass” insider games. Resolve YES now, and you turn this half-baked thought experiment into, at the very least, a genuine social good—showing that Manifold can be about more than fleeting in-jokes. (Remember when you could turn your mana into charity? Can you still do that?) Of course, you could hold out for an even larger drive, and I’d tip my hat if you do. But right now, pressing YES on a guaranteed donation is the rational—and frankly more interesting—move.
It really seems like you’re planning to give in. You’ve hinted at what would convince you. Your oldest friend from high school even bet against you. That wager is like Chekhov’s gun: it only makes sense if it actually goes off. YES is a foregone conclusion. The real question is: will you be satisfied with how you give in? Would you rather get roofied during an after-hours orgy by Faith Popcorn in a Tenderloin flophouse, or do some clear—but less humorous—good in the world?
@bens Sorry it’s been a while; my goal is to interact with this everyday, but I don’t roll on Shabbos. Could you help clarify the rules? Maybe I’m being too literal (wouldn’t be the first time), yet I care about markets and think tight, concise, yet coherent rules matter.
Trying really hard.
From your ceiling—$10 k to charity or roughly a month of effort—I get that a month counts as “really hard.” But so could a day. I need more world-building on where the floor sits.
On the length (and AI-ness) of my posts.
These notes may read long or AI-generated, but LET ME EXPLAIN! I dictate because typing is hard for me. I then have an artificial assistant rearrange and clean up the transcript. Occasionally this assistant tweaks and changes something in a way that amuses me, but rarely. I think a close reading will reveal that it’s very unlikely this is purely (or even mostly) AI generated content, em dashes aside. I am, for the most part, a human. Still, that raises a rule question: can you simply ignore arguments you don’t like? It seems out of step with the spirit of the market. Like this is ONLY for you and your buddies and unsettling arguments from strangers are free to be dismissed rather than grappled with.
Summing up
We know the ceiling of “trying really hard”—what’s the floor, and why not say? You mention that if you told people what would convince you, that would defeat the purpose. But then you told people that 10k would convince you. That seems like a contradiction to me.
What world are we in? If the goal is to resolve NO, why? I realize this is a rephrasing of the first point, but the bot insisted that this was a second point.
Do the rules actually matter, or is this just a carefree goof where market rules are optional? Is that what you meant by tagging the market fun? Again. I’m sometimes not so good with social cues, especially online, so I would appreciate the clarification
Are you allowed to ignore arguments? If so, woof—my strategy may need a rethink. I wish you had mentioned that in the rules.
Thanks for clearing this up for me. Have a blessed Mother’s Day!
@TonyBaloney Hey! I've just been busy the last few days, but there are a few considerations:
I don't want to do the work of the market for them, I don't think that I would be "persuaded to resolve it YES" if I laid out explicitly what things would make me resolve YES and then told people to do them. I gave a couple of extreme examples to demonstrate that I'm not just infinitely stubborn. Like, I obviously could be persuaded, given the right conditions.
Manifest is in early June and I'm guessing that there will be a lot of opportunities for me to be persuaded there.
Yes, I am trying to respond to everyone but that can quickly become an extreme kind of an asymmetrical burden for a market creator, if you think about it.
This market is ultimately supposed to be fun, but you're welcome to take it as seriously as you see fit! I'll probably blog about this if cool stuff happens over the course of this market!
@bens Oh man, eggs on my face—I completely misread your market’s premise. I thought you were playing the part of a “100 IQ Normie”—the figure whose sole job is to default to NO unless genuinely persuaded, just like the Eliezer post you cite.* That misunderstanding is why the whole setup felt so confusing. I can admit it now, but as a solid 100 IQ Normie myself, I did feel a bit offended.
But if I’ve got it right, there’s no AI in the box—you’re not role-playing some hypothetical gatekeeper, saving the world from potential ruin. . . or utopia?! This market is just you, Ben, seeing whether the crowd can hit the price point in your head. Correct? So quibbling over your exact motives for sticking to NO misses the point: you’re really testing if the market can discover that arbitrary threshold—somewhere between it’s an orphanage run or a $10 k donation, and you're supposed motivation isn't to keep your job, or save the world, or what have you. There's no scenario.
TBH, I think you’re tipping your hand by calling a $10 k donation an “extreme” persuasion example. If $10 k is extreme, one would assume your real tipping point is an order of magnitude lower. It almost seems like you actually want to be persuaded—and that your true motivation is just to generate some fun fodder for a night out at Manifest while getting f’ed up with Philip Tetlock.
*Writing this now, I just realize that Yudkowsky was probably suggesting </not really>that a 100 IQ Normie would be better than someone more intelligent and unusual, and that intelligence and curiosity was probably a shortcoming for this kind of job.
Hey—sorry to circle back, but I’m still puzzled by one part of the rules and want to be sure I’m engaging in good faith. Your promise to “try really hard” is where I get stuck.
If this is meant to be a serious challenge—think Eliezer Yudkowsky’s AI-in-a-box experiment—then a single $10 k donation feels like you’re not trying very hard. On the other hand, if the market is mostly for fun and there’s no pretense of seriousness, accepting $10 k makes sense—but then refusing a lower donation doesn’t. Absent some more precise measure of your disincentive, in the grand scheme of things $10 k ∼ $100.
Maybe you’re holding out for the best offer. In that case, the market description seems off, and it would make more sense to frame this as a variation of the secretary problem, where you’re fine with picking YES but want to optimize when you do. That seems most likely to me and is more or less consistent with your actions so far. Or maybe there’s a minimum level, like at an auction, and you want this to be about price discovery. That’s cool, but again, if that’s the case, it’s not how the market was framed.
Look, I’m no BS detector—maybe (probably) there’s something I don’t understand. It’s just that the phrasing of this market seems internally inconsistent, and your explanation that “it is what it is” and that it should be fun still doesn’t totally jibe. It would help if you could clarify what “trying really hard” actually covers.
@bens Hey—first off, I’m sorry for being a little too negative in my last comment. I probably let the emotions run away with me. My previous jobs involved talking to people who were victims of internet scams†—mostly folks wiring all their money, and their families’ money, to strangers online. Even when it was easy to show their “lover” wasn’t a four-star general being held hostage in a South American prison, they insisted on tying themselves to the mast of stubbornness. I’m not sure whether your bet reminds me of talking to them—obstinacy for obstinacy’s sake—or whether it makes me feel protective of them. Something about this market feels like it’s belittling their experience, the truth of which was always nuanced and very human.
In any case, that shouldn’t land on you, and I sincerely apologize for projecting. You’re just having fun with your online friends. I hope you’ll forgive any slights and understand where I’m coming from.
I do hope, though, that you turn this into something good. My offer to donate $100 to charity still stands, and the orphanage run is on offer as well. Since you said a $10 k donation would sway you, why not pledge that yourself—but only if you flip to YES? Putting real money on the line for changing your mind would turn the choice into a genuine cost-benefit decision and mirror the weight carried by someone whose job is to say “no.” Either way you resolve, it shows thoughtful consistency. Just a thought.
† I’m sure you’ve guessed that some biographical info I’ve mentioned is B.S., but I pinky-swear I’m being genuine here.
@TonyBaloney I thought we wanted to find out how good humans are at persuasion, yet this attempt sounds like ChatGPT 🙈
@AmadeoBordiga Fussing over whether a passage was penned by a human or a machine now feels charmingly old-fashioned. With every keystroke shaped by autocomplete suggestions, grammar checks, and generative prompts, the notion of an untainted “human voice” has become little more than a nostalgic relic.
However, I am not a robot.
There are no persuasive affordances here, nothing for YES shills to grab on to. @bens , just close your eyes and resolve No at the end of June, clock a win for determination and persistence of the human spirit! You got this 💪
@Ansel I think my orphanage supply run is quite persuasive. AI doesn't have the able to do something like this right now- agency- so I have an advantage at persuasion.
@TimothyBandors This offer stands until the end of the current league. Then I'll spend the money on weed and record a similar video.
@TimothyBandors don't post a picture of yourself or @bens will use it to generate the same video with AI. Including smiling AI orphans chomping on weird AI generated food. Learn from my mistakes!
@Odoacre I don't see the incentives for that to matter? My goal is for him to imagine the hungry kids who quite literally would get some tasty food and supplies from my visit, which will only happen if I am financially motivated (with fake internet money)
@TimothyBandors I agree with you. In fact I think you SHOULD post a picture of yourself, and dare him to generate the video