« Assorted links | Main | Do influential people develop more conventional opinions? »
BloggingFrozenHeads.TV with Robin Hanson
You'll find it here. Robin is awesome, as usual, and that is why I am grinning throughout. The topics are (among others):
 |
Tyler vs. Robin on the merits of cryonics (12:23)
Does fiction weaken your grasp of reality? (06:52)
Are economists evil? (12:10)
How to estimate the value of a person’s life (06:04)
Will prediction markets ever really take off? (08:06)
Has fame made Tyler boring? (02:27)
Addendum: Robin and his readers comment here.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 15, 2009 at 05:17 PM in Television | Permalink
Comments
I think the inability to "fudge" the results of prediction markets is fatal to the chances of them every being widely adopted. This isn't simply a matter of them not delivering the results that decision makers want ex ante. Even assuming that prediction markets are more accurate than other sorts of forecasting, they aren't going to be correct 100% of the time, and when it does deliver bad results the normal ways of defusing blame won't be available to it the way they are to politicians or C.E.O's. If a politician advocates a particular policy that turns out to be a disaster, he has a large incentive to shift the blame elsewhere, either by minimizing his role in the decision, blaming the bad results on other actors, claiming that things otherwise would have been even worse, etc. He will also have personal connections and loyalty that he can rely on to weather the storm. In a futarchy, by contrast, none of these methods are available, which means that the full blame for even mistakes will fall on the process itself.
Posted by: Blackadder at Mar 15, 2009 5:28:58 PM
I didn't know you were famous.
Posted by: john at Mar 15, 2009 5:37:44 PM
Is signaling like Conspicuous Consumption? Where can I read about it? By the way, my brother is a graduate of MIT, getting his PhD in Cognitive Linguistics, but he was also an officer on an attack sub. I ask him questions about being on a sub because I'm going to write a novel, if I live long enough, about a writer who served on a sub. Anyway, according to my brother and friends of his who served on his sub, Battlestar Gallactica is much more realistic about what it's like to be on a sub than so-called "realistic" shows that show life on a submarine.
Posted by: Don the libertarian Democrat at Mar 15, 2009 6:15:38 PM
Your analysis on economic thinking was spot on. I am comforted that an economist is thinking a little philosophically.
Posted by: zach at Mar 15, 2009 6:27:47 PM
The jackalope just swam in from Atlantis, unicorn horn in its mouth.
I was gonna give up all my vices and go find a job tomorrow, but it looks like one last worthless evening to savor this one.
Posted by: Fenn at Mar 15, 2009 7:14:35 PM
The cryonics snippet was interesting, from the perspective of a robin-esque supporter. Indeed it's more substantive than other rebuttals I've come across, but a few notes nonetheless.
If you're not already aware, cryonics has advanced significantly from the pure freezing and/or simple anti-freeze perfusion methods employed in earlier decades. Current vitrification of brain tissue appears to offer some appreciable non-zero prospect of information and process recovery. Related companies have already revived an animal kidney previously vitrified, returning it to near full functionality. The brain is dauntingly more complex, but the leap does not appear metaphysical in proportion.
I can appreciate your dismissal of very tail end probabilities with apparent hyperbolic payoffs on practical grounds, but cryonics in my view does not constitute such a limiting case for success.
On signaling, my understanding is that a fair sized minority choose relative anonymity codified as a precondition to contractual commitment with companies like Alcor. Granted, their may be other more pertinent psychological explanations for this.
Finally, on similarly practical grounds, myself and others don't or haven't a metric by which to properly account for the very hyperbolic tail probabilities that constitute Boltzmann brains, MW QM interpretations, metaphysicalities, and the like. By fiat we might discount them until, in the case of physical hypotheses, they're buttressed by a good deal of evidence and expert opinion (at which time presumably they're no longer tail stragglers).
Posted by: SUR at Mar 15, 2009 7:35:57 PM
Having watched three segments - value of life, are economists evil, and fiction - I score it:
Two rounds heavily for Tyler. "Fiction" round an unimpressive draw.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Mar 15, 2009 8:08:41 PM
tyler's beard is going to haunt my dreams tonight
Posted by: Robert at Mar 15, 2009 8:30:17 PM
At times I found it difficult to keep up with Tyler, probably more my fault than his, so I apologize if I am misrepresenting his position, but it sounded to me as if he was advancing the position that since intuitive bias was unavoidable on some level, no one could offer the specific processes that they followed to reach their conclusions as evidence of their superior rationality. That doesn't seem right to me. Is that what he was saying?
Posted by: Todd at Mar 15, 2009 8:44:46 PM
So what is Tyler going to do to stay weird? Become more like Roissy or talk about IQ in the Times columns? And does Robin really believe in models? Isn't it just a clever way to get money from a university?
Posted by: mmmbop at Mar 15, 2009 8:48:53 PM
Not to be down on you at all, but for your information, you lost me at 44 minutes.
Posted by: odograph at Mar 15, 2009 8:52:33 PM
I agree with both of you!
Posted by: Unit at Mar 15, 2009 8:55:12 PM
If becoming influential requires you to adopt more conventional opinions, then are you really becoming influential?
Posted by: Blackadder at Mar 15, 2009 10:15:42 PM
There are already people walking around who spent years at liquid nitrogen temperatures earlier in their lives. Neurons in culture have been successfully cryopreserved. Rabbit kidneys have been successfully vitrified to -130'C.
Tyler, what do you believe to be the equivalent supporting evidence for the existence of angels?
What results would you have to see before you would be willing to sign up to be cryopreserved?
Posted by: Chris Rasch at Mar 15, 2009 11:04:59 PM
Yes, I agree with Rasch. It's as if Tyler has never heard of IVF. He doesn't really evaluate any arguments seriously but just dismisses cryonics as if his intuition is enough.
But of course it rarely is. However, it's convenient, so he tries to slide by on it as if we in audience were stupid and wouldn't catch it. As for Hanson, he presented a weak counter-argument, his deference overwhelmed him or he is himself losing his conviction. Possibly both.
Posted by: appalled at Mar 16, 2009 12:28:23 AM
While there may only be a 1% or other miniscule chance that Robin's frozen mind could be resurrected, there is a 100% chance that his teeth could be resurrected. And if I were him, I would take that chance. The dude has got a very good top teeth smile, and I think Tyler is a bit intimidated by it.
Posted by: BoscoH at Mar 16, 2009 1:53:55 AM
One of the criticisms against economists is that they treat the results they generate from their model of reality as if it should be the default position that needs to be defeated for an alternative to be undertaken.
Who doesn't treat their own ideas this way?
Posted by: Justin Ross at Mar 16, 2009 7:35:24 AM
Wow, Tyler, you really like that joke about blogging frozen heads.
And they always said economists have terrible senses of humor! How wrong they were.
Posted by: Hail Seitan at Mar 17, 2009 4:33:41 PM
