26 Comments

The implicit assumption is that predicitng future outcomes in their entirety is too hard.

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If you are trying to predict future intelligence because it's a better predictor of future outcomes, shouldn't you just predict future outcomes and skip the intelligence measure?

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But where is the evidence that any underdog has outsmarted Harvard at the admissions game? My impression is that Harvard has been since the 1940s or so pretty ruthless at researching the admissions game internally, but tries to give naive outsiders a mis-impression of how much quantitative research it has done for itself regarding testing and the like.

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Of course estimating intelligence is not intrinsically racist. Jason Richwine in his PhD at Harvard proposed using such estimated intelligence to inform US immigration policy.

How did that work out for him?

The correct facts given to us is that IQ is just a number, racism is the reason for social ills and violent crime is caused by poverty. And if you don't believe that you will be excommunicated.

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Yeah, but I'm assuming we care about "objectively" good results. By "privately having info" do you mean speculators would predict for individual outcomes, like what lump1 asked about?

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Harvard is a brand, having it on your resumé opens doors on its own. It's a classic example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, this can go on because, surprise, surprise, you don't need to be a super creative genius for most jobs, even high level white collar jobs.

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And doesn't it look like Harvard, Yale, et al are already doing a pretty good job of predicting at age 18 who will be writing the biggest donation checks at age 50? There's very little turnover in which colleges have the biggest endowments, so I'd say that Harvard is already pretty good at predicting lifetime earnings.

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"A standard result in intelligence research is that intelligence as measured late in life, such as at age fifty, is a much better indicator of ultimate potential than is intelligence measured at early ages."

Do you have multiple sources for that? Are you sure you aren't getting age 4 and age 14 confused with 18 and 50?

Haven't we seen enough evidence over the decades to say that Herrnstein's 1971 prediction that having pretty good college admissions tests would have stratifying effects on society has turned out to be accurate?

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Speculators can (and will) use race as a basis for prediction. (Whereas race can be excluded or even partialed out of formalized prediction.) 'Antiracist' norms require its exclusion.

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A standard result in intelligence research is that intelligence as measured late in life, such as at age fifty, is a much better indicator of ultimate potential than is intelligence measured at early ages.

I've seen this result (although I can't locate it), but I'm not aware of its being well-replicated. [One standard (countervailing) result is that with age abilities become more differentiated.]

Do you have a link or cite?

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I take it that a part of the idea of prediction markets is that the price will contain all kinds of information that may not be published. For example, a college roommate who sees you spiraling out of control will find your futures price overvalued, and can probably profit from putting money on a lower prediction. His doing so will immediately put a downward pressure on your futures price. Do I understand that right?

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There is a world of difference between a person privately having info they are willing to act upon and creating a shared statistical model that a wide community can accept has having been proven sufficiently reliable.

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Re: "Estimating intelligence is NOT intrinsically racist." I agree, and I never asserted otherwise. I stand by my remarks above.

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"We don't need these markets to have access to more info that colleges already have on students."

Then why did you say it was hard to collect data if the data you envision being used is already in possession of the universities? Of course a predict market could still be run using the data from the universities, but what you said sounded like the prediction markets would collect extra info that was otherwise difficult to get.

"We don't need them to know things that won't be revealed for decades. We just want the best currently available estimate given currently available info."

Well you said using past correlations isn't good enough because too many things change in 30 years time. How would a prediction market not run into exactly the same problem? What latent knowledge, not available from past correlations, would bettors have here? In this case a prediction market couldn't even select habitually "good" bettors because no one lives for more than a couple of 30-year cycles anyway...

Do you not trust predictive studies in this field to be independent enough (like consultancy in business being hired to give status to supporting a decision that was already made)? If so that could be an argument for wanting a prediction market instead of studies, but I'm not getting the arguments you've presented so far (which could be my fault, but either way I need more explanation to be convinced).

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We don't need these markets to have access to more info that colleges already have on students. We don't need them to know things that won't be revealed for decades. We just want the best currently available estimate given currently available info.

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"No it's not, but the results generated by such a scheme would inevitably show racial disparities between groups of test-takers"

But probably nothing that is statistically significant once you factor in all the other known variables. I guess a university could choose to focus on "race" (by whatever definition) if it really wanted to but why would it do so when there are 10+ other variables that are more predictive and not considered so offensive?

"But, and that's the key point, the changes are usually quite moderate, about +/- 5 points either way is typical. A change from 95 up to say 112 is also possible [...] but cases like this are clearly outliers"

The whole point of the testing would be for universities to select for those people who keep developing and do show above average IQ-malleability (usually because they do more/better mental exercises, so that exercise is a predictive factor). Also, IQ is not a linear scale: someone with an IQ of 112 will solve a problem more than 18% faster than someone with an IQ of 95.

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