🏅 Top traders

interesting! I made a big bet with Michael Wheatley about this because I thought I was so smart because I had read this tweet, but then he explained that he’d seen it and interpreted it as referring to the dyeing as opposed to the bleaching, so I thought I was the fool and didn’t bet more, but apparently I was right? exciting times here on manifold dot markets

@Conflux oh wait I just reread the description and it seems like bleaching and dyeing are being used as synonyms. our reading comprehension abilities were not very impressive on this market

@Conflux I don't think so. She uses the term "dye" to refer to the bleaching process in the second paragraph, but otherwise the whole description refers entirely to the whitening process and not to the subsequent dyeing.

In fact, speaking of reading comprehension, I went back over @etirabys's tweets... If you do a close reading of the second item item in her tweet thread:

just once before I have children. and can't have bleach in the house for a million years. I would like to have. (plaintive weeb bleating) silver hair

You'll note she says that she will no longer be able to bleach her hair after having children. If she had decided that home-bleaching was a mistake, children would not pose an issue. The bleach would not be stored at home because she would be getting it done at a salon. Therefore we can infer that the home-bleaching was a success, @etirabys has no regrets, and in fact is now fully committed to doing all bleach applications at home in the future. It was only the subsequent dyeing that fell short and no doubt she misclicked the resolution of this market. Q.E.D.

@MichaelWheatley I think this misses some possibilities - perhaps she regretted this particular bleaching but is wistful about the idea of having bleach in the house for smaller bleach jobs (she mentions having success bleaching strips of her hair). Or maybe there was some part of how she did this bleach job that she regrets because it set her up poorly for the dyeing stage.

On the other hand, if she regretted the bleaching-and-dyeing as a whole but not the bleaching specifically, I could see a case for re-resolving N/A or maybe NO. Depends on the facts of the situation

@Conflux

Or maybe there was some part of how she did this bleach job that she regrets because it set her up poorly for the dyeing stage.

I considered this too, but the problem was that the dye-job came out too blue, and a failed bleaching would presumably have the opposite problem: a final result that is too orange or yellow.

@MichaelWheatley @Conflux the chain of events was this:

• bleach 0 at salon: expensive and not satisfactory, decided to continue at home despite the downsides (losing access to Olaplex 0, a hair repair liquid that only pro hairdressers can buy)

• bleach 1: produced pale but yellowish hair, close to what I want but not quite

• dyed it with a dilute blue-purple mix that was not sufficiently dilute, hair is pale blue now

• less damaging ways of getting the blue out do not work, decide to go for bleach 2

• bleach 2 (of shorter duration than bleach 0 or 1): takes out all the blue, color is perfect

• start washing the bleach out, hair falls out in such huge clumps that I plan to glue them into a painting to represent clouds

• still have a lot of remaining hair, look normal (great, even). Dithered about how to resolve this market given that I'm simultaneously happy with how I look and oof about [the hair I lost, the fact that my overblueing misstep after bleach 1 led me to embark on bleach 2]. I think the presence of oof is the relevant decision node, so I resolve YES.

Oh no

Do you have long hair, I presume?

Does this resolve N/A if you don't do it, or to the market probability?

I recommend the latter if you're using this market to help you decide, otherwise it discourages YES bettors from making the price really high

@Conflux good point, I will do that

Ah, yet another non-obvious downside of N/A resolutions. But does this cut both ways?

@Conflux's concern with N/A resolution: If I drive the price to 99% my upside is cut off. If I'm wrong and the price goes back down and etirabys has no regrets, I lose money. If I'm right then etirabys defers to the wisdom of the market, doesn't home-bleach, and resolves N/A.

Opposite concern with resolve-to-market, i.e., market manipulation: Driving the price to 99% is guaranteed profit if I think I have enough money to keep the price there and that etirabys will not home-bleach and resolve to the market's estimate of a 99% chance of home-bleach regret.

I guess the latter strikes me as too risky for anyone to try to exploit though, so I guess I'll agree with @Conflux. Anyway, interesting case study here!

PS: For anyone interested, I previously wrote a whole mini-essay about the badness of N/A resolution.

PPS: See also https://manifold.markets/dreev/how-many-instances-of-prognootling

@dreev Yeah, I agree that resolving PROB can also make the market turn into meaningless self-resolving whalebait if it starts to seem very likely that etirabys won't do it. I guess my best recommendation is for the market creator to not give any indication of that before resolving...

@Conflux I guess another option is that instead of resolving to the market prob, etirabys resolves to her subjective prob of regretting were she to have done it…

@Conflux Smart. And maybe @etirabys's subjective probability matches the market probability but if there's any hint of market manipulation then it wouldn't. I think @ZviMowshowitz does things like this in his markets.

@Conflux do you know @etirabys goes by "she" or are you assuming anyone this invested in hair-bleaching is female?

I agree with restricting the speculation to head hair, per OP description. But most females learn the hard way at an early age that it's a poor idea to bring up "natural hair color" in mixed company.

@ClubmasterTransparent yes, etirabys is she/her. also has an internet presence at twitter.com/etirabys + etirabys.tumblr.com

@dreev Yeah I resolve to market % often, seems to work well.