See this post for context: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h6kChrecznGD4ikqv/increasing-iq-is-trivial
SEE BELOW FOR UPDATED CRITERION (MODS RESOLVE)
Resolves YES if there are independent reports from people who were in contact with George3d6 (I'm thinking of johnswentworth and jacobjacob from the comments from the post) and used his methodology that they found a significant increase in IQ. This will resolve YES if at least THREE people report a significant (not specifying exactly what significant means, but if is unclear, I will wait until further replication) increase using this method.
Resolves NO if George3d6's experiments indicate this is not replicable AND at LEAST three people report they have not found a significant increase using this method.
I'm not exactly sure if these resolution criteria are good, so if you have any suggestions, please put them in the comments and if I think there are better, I will update the resolution criteria. I will try to resolve this in the spirit of the answer rather than EXACTLY adhering to the resolution criteria if things seem unclear.
Edit: updated resolves no to be more strict. If it is unclear, I will just keep the question open until parties agree. If it seems that no one is going to agree (and people arrive at a sort of stalemate), I will resolve N/A
SECOND EDIT:
This market's resolution will be decided by site moderators. This overrides any resolution criteria above.
Based on the comments from George I think it is reasonable to resolve this No. The market has a specific closing date so I'm taking that to mean it needed to be replicated before the end of 2024. Maybe if someone is still interested, they could make another version of this market for a longer time period.
@Eliza In the absence of any of the initial resolution criteria for NO being met, and George implying that it has, at least to some degree, replicated, it seems both incorrect and not in keeping with the intention of the market that this resolve to NO.
I guess the mods have made their choice, but let my protest be known.
@JackStennett Sorry for the unclear resolution criteria. However, I don't think this has replicated. (It had to be independent replicators.) And I made the closing date new years'.
@JackStennett I understand you're not happy, I can explain my understanding of the situation and any other moderator is free to overrule this:
The original criteria are thrown out and it's up to moderators to resolve.
Moderators were originally asked 16 days ago and out of the 20ish moderators no one else seemed willing to intervene. Eventually, someone has to do something. We can't just let the market sit forever.
As a moderator, I reviewed all the information available in the comment section, the previous criteria, the statements from both the market creator and from George. I stated that I would not resolve No without more info to make it clear I was trying not to be biased toward the No side even though nothing had been reported.
I asked for additional information from George which was provided promptly. George indicated that it would be okay to resolve No.
Even though they are no longer in effect, I want to note that the YES criteria required at least 3 independent people to report success in this topic. I don't think that happened. The only person who made any reports seems to have been George?
The NO requirements from the original criteria would have been similarly hard to meet.
I guess the mods have made their choice, but let my protest be known.
I'm not 'mods', I'm just the one stupid moderator who decided to try to help resolve a market that has been stuck indefinitely.
If the original creator wanted to take it back over again they probably have 48 hours to do so, but the guidelines are not super clear on this exact situation. If some other moderator wants to overrule my choice, that's totally fine by me. But someone has to do something eventually, you can't just pretend it can sit untouched forever.
@g_w1 do you know of any more data that's available that'd potentially count for a replication? (i wont resolve this bc of my position but good to ask)
@g_w1 I see a couple users have large Yes positions @RobertCousineau and @Gurkenglas and also @GeorgeHosu3131 and @jacksonpolack and @Gabrielle have large No positions.
But where are the arguments for Yes and No resolutions? How am I supposed to resolve a market with no data and no information or rules? Write a response here that would convince me to resolve it one way or the other? I'm especially interested in hearing how @g_w1 would resolve it.
@Eliza I personally made my position on priors, and I have no idea what's happened with it in the last 10 months. Given that I haven't heard anything about it since then, I'd guess that it still has not replicated.
@Gabrielle I didn't want to immediately resolve No in case it was biased against Yes, but if no one has any presentation of evidence for Yes it seems destined to be a No. The creator has thrown away the criteria that could have lead to a larger chance for an N/A.
TL;DR - As one of the main "yes" holder I am ok with you resolving this to "no" if having to resolve this is stressing you out :p
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I took the no position more to be like "hey, it's me, I did this, I believe it's true" don't mind resolution either which way.
My update on the experiment itself:
The stats sig effect did hold in > 20 people (but only 7 intervention, the rest were controls)
But the actual sig values were smaller (one of my sig tests was > 0.05, the others < but still higher values)
The replicated effect was smaller (unsure what it is off the top of my head, but between +2/+7 depending on how you measure it -- the value is non-linear anyway)
I dropped the project and will not be running further replication nor have I found a person that wants to (or rather, I am doing the project but I've moved past the "I should gather data to prove it works" stage)
So it seems fair to resolve to "No"
Though it seems silly so many bets exist given the lack of a resolution criteria 🤷
@GeorgeHosu3131 Since you are no longer trying to replicate this, which was the premise in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h6kChrecznGD4ikqv/increasing-iq-is-trivial?commentId=vM7dPW5NrH7gQYtHo , are you more willing to dilute the intervention now?
I'm normally not on the hopium snorting side around here, but in this case there seems to be a pretty straightforward hypothesis for YES (full disclosure: I have NOT done any research on this). Namely, people in daily life are simply not at their best, so why would it be surprising that getting some nice massages and good sleep or whatever would increase your IQ by 5 points? AFAIU, the buff can't be stacked and runs out as soon as you stop actively maintaining it.
Compare to the well-documented negative effects of even mild sleep deprivation.
I think it would be surprising if some nice massages increased your IQ (in the sense of, how generally capable you are at intellectual tasks) by 5 points, tbh. I would expect 'getting better sleep' to help a bit, but I don't think enough people are perpetually sleep deprived to lead to a 5 point increase in general.
…targeted NIR interference therapy, short UV during the morning, a lot of inversion-based exercises where I focused on contracting/relaxing neck and face muscles, a few customized breathing exercises (think wim hof), figuring out the correct levels for a bunch of cholinergic vaso[dilators/modulators] (think noopept), massage therapies to reduce tension on the spine, some proprioception-heavy movement practices, a niche tibetan metta meditation series… and about 5 other things that are even harder to compress.
Doesn't seem right to me.
I'm actually curious which mods will resolve the market here and how that will be decided. I have found more people who want to run versions of my self-experiment and I could have them report their findings & chat with someone over DMs or email.
Otherwise, all I have is a spreadsheet with that, but for all intents and purposes I could be faking that to gain fake internet points, people have done worse for such (:
I was hoping the Lighthaven team would try and replicate this, but it looks unlikely due to the time commitment involved -- so best I can do is provide people that have tried your way, and they could vouch for effects & for the controls, since people are bringing their own controls too
@GeorgeHosu3131 Good point. I would maybe ask on the manifold discord server, the mods seem to be active there.
@GeorgeHosu3131 I've not followed this at all but my understanding of the second edit is that a "Cheaty-Win" would not count because the original criteria were overridden.
SECOND EDIT:
This market's resolution will be decided by site moderators. This overrides any resolution criteria above.
Maybe those original criteria should all be crossed out in the description to make this more clear?
@GeorgeHosu3131 Speaking not as a moderator but just a dude, my thought is that any chance of your experiment actually working consistently is a much huger deal than this manifold market and you should just pursue that without any thought to play money. You could make a lot of real money with this!
@Joshua I agree that it's a bigger deal and at this point I am pursuing that but "how to convince the external world that this works" vs "what is the proof manifold need to know that it works" are related at like r=0.2, so it might be worth figuring that out.
@jim I'm no longer in Christchurch, I'm in SF at present, but if this sort of stuff interest you then you should hit me up the next time I'm there, or hit up the one employee I have that's in chch ^^ (Does manifold have DMs ? If so DM me your signal and I'll create a group) -- I feel like there's a 50/50 chance we know each other vaguely already if you're on manifold & live in chch, limited crowd : p