87 Comments

Like, 2 packages, so that it works just like Obama vs Romney did (not) work as expected?

I think what you need to convince people of, is that your ideas are not something reliant on magical thinking. There will only be others trading to profit from the manipulators if the required analysis is cost effective. You seem to neglect that nobody will put more effort into earning a dollar than they can get a dollar for elsewhere.

Also, it's not clear why exactly decisions on bundled students would be any better than just an exam to pass. And we humans value fairness anyway. One's ability to enter school should not depend on their skin colour.

You neglect that there's also insider info (any student can cooperate with those betting against him, and deliberately fail against expectations).

Actually, scratch that. There are corporations, those need to make all sorts of decisions, and they do not seem to employ prediction markets to do so. Which tells us that either a: prediction markets are not such a great idea and the corporations rightfully neglect to use them or b: the corporations that are being traded on do not end up adopting great ideas, in which case, prediction markets once again can not be expected to work very well either, as those rely on adoption of best methods by the traders.

I often notice that people with ideas seem to seek not the avenues most likely to result in success, but the avenues where the failure provides least information about value of their ideas. If colleges aren't adopting prediction markets for admissions, that's easily explainable as because they're biased and so on and so forth. If corporations don't, well, that threatens the value of the idea itself.

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Yes. The markets are estimating chance of success, which means being from historically disadvantaged groups will hurt.

But universities consider more than just chance of success when they accept students. They could keep on accepting disadvantaged students with lower success probabilities even when those success probabilities come from a market rather than their own judgment.

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Schools that cannot choose their students have to compete on quality instead of status.

Lessons on School Choice from Sweden

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@f26939f398e5b2e21ea353b06370c426:disqus  -

That is a bad analogy and doesn't make any sense. 

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I read your update, it just doesn't make any sense. 

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Chris Peterson:

Distinction without a difference. Else what's the point?

What's the point of making it illegal to publish your credit card number, notwithstanding that every ordinary clerk at a store where you shop sees it?

Often, in fact, privacy interests are furthered by limiting exposure short of complete anonymity.

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Chris Peterson:

Distinction without a difference. Else what's the point?

Come on! What's the point of making it illegal to publish your credit card number, notwithstanding that every ordinary clerk at a store where you shop sees it?

Very often privacy interests are furthered by limiting exposure short of complete anonymity.

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@f26939f398e5b2e21ea353b06370c426:disqus - 

Distinction without a difference. Else what's the point? 

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No, 6 active members; alternate(s) are on top of that.  Unz also gave a (different) wrong number in his article, for some reason; not sure why there's so much confusion.

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If Robin had the courage of his convictions he would write a book espousing prediction markets instead of one on EMs. Robin thinks prediction markets are a panacea for existing problems, but nobody cares whether there's an EM future a century hence. If Robin could prove the conclusion rather than merely establish its plausibility, maybe he'd inspire a few thousand despairing suicides among idealists. But who cares about there being a 25% chance that EMs will take over the world in a century. Only a few nerds. The topic isn't even high status!

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Our theories about manipulation have been tested in small lab markets.

If you get enough entrants, which may be a fairly small number, the market will probably not be manipulable. That much should be conceded. But you have little reason to be smug about getting entrants. If your economic model is predicated on rational financial actors, after all, nobody will be predicted to enter. Gambling, after all, is financially irrational.

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 @google-f131022ef3ff62796ebb40e140061d9e:disqus  So it was not tested.

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srdiamond:

Well, that would still be unfair in some way, likely with a negative effect even on those that are passed thanks to pro-diversity measures, later down the road. If I can hire 2 guys and one of them, I know, had to pass harder exams, I'd rather hire that one.

I have impression that prestige of university primarily matters in the less technical fields where there is not much criteria. If I am hiring freshly graduated PhD for a technical job, I don't care if the PhD is from MIT, or it is from some backwater place somewhere in Bulgaria for example, I'll just read the PhD thesis itself or what ever paper they consider the most awesome (I don't even really care at that point if there's a PhD, someone's PhD thesis can be much worse than other person's Master thesis). But if I am hiring for some sort of economical job, in investment or what ever, then I don't really know what constitutes a good employee, nobody knows, everyone performs barely better than chance anyway. I have to rely on various really low grade evidence such as the school they did go to, those would make some quite small difference in the expected performance but that's the only difference I can make. I'm also much more free to rely on superstition, free to just hire whoever will look good when I am making a sales pitch, whoever may have friends/relatives among potential investors, that sort of thing. Not hiring a worker.

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you said you wanted applications anonymized.

Quote? Actually, he suggested removing all clearly identifying information, not all identifying information. He never advocated "anonymization." Your word, not his.

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That's a very fair point, but I don't think anyone has ever attributed the relative filtering out of the demographics you describe as being because of jerks, but rather because of the relatively straightforward "critical mass" argument for diversity advanced in affirmative action cases in the Supreme Court. 

Selective admissions is a zero sum game. Every student is an individual, but some are more archetypical than others. I myself was an archetypical college applicant: a white, straight, male, with moderate leadership and good grades/scores from a solid suburban public school. I didn't get into a lot of highly selective schools. Having sat on the other side of the desk, I now know why: because I was merely a good, not a great, applicant. It wasn't because I was white / upper-middle class / etc. It was because I was, well, just like a lot of other good but unexceptional people. I realize that the cry of experts and insiders is always "ah, but you don't understand!" And I understand that it is unconvincing. I also would say that several years of working in admissions at one of the most selective schools in the country completely changed my understanding of admissions by redefining my rubric of what exceptional meant. When you see college applicants as a vast pool, and not just the bright / fun kid down the street who you've known since she was a kid, it changes your entire viewpoint dramatically. 

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Fair point. 4 active members, 2 alternates. 

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