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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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This is our monthly place to discuss relevant topics that haven’t appeared in recent posts.
Open Thread
More wisdom from my experience on horse racing prediction markets:
Updating for odds which are very low or very high is far more sensitive to new information. i.e., the lower the probability of an outcome, the greater the volatility of its odds on a prediction market.
For instance, for a mid-range 'average' probablity of a horse winning (which in horse racing is around $5), the price is quite robust to new information coming in, even lots of new information and updating doesn't change the odds that much in the short term. But for a very low priced runner (say $1.40), even updating with tiny amounts of new information can cause huge probability shifts (hence the greater volatility).
This behaviour of prediction markets shows up the big problem with all discussions about extreme far-mode events (Singularity, AI, nano-goo, immortality etc. etc). The fact is that very low probability events are highly sensitive to new information - i.e., even tiny amounts of new information used to update can cause huge probability shifts. Perhaps this is the reason that futurist and 'expert' discourse about the far future isn't that much more accurate than the man on the street?
But in fairness, our society has become (to my way of thinking) extremely focused on the “overnight success” mentality i.e. American Idol and every other reality TV series.
That's what I was getting at, but you put it better.
If the tendency was for a majority of our young people to suddenly want to be the next Shakespeare, Hemmingway or Picasso I think a lot of very valuable education would likely come with the effort. But as you said, they're wanting microwave success so they can have all of the bling, etc.