Post #1702626

This article is a great explainer of why prediction markets have a nice pitch that absolutely resonates with many intellectuals and yet is deplorable in the real world. Some nice quotes: > So if the pitch is good, why is the product a sign of rot? Because the pitch was about epistemics. The product is about something worse. > What a society chooses to price reveals what it actually gives a shit about, in the same way that what a society chooses to memorialise reveals what it honours. > [A] civilisation under strain stopped prosecuting its disputes through argument and institution, and started pricing them. > [The defenders] argue that the markets produce more accurate probabilities, as though accuracy is the only remaining virtue; but it's the virtue you keep when you've stopped believing in any of the others. When a civilisation loses its ability to answer "what should we do" it retreats to answering "what will happen?" https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/116451824580898297