Apes of the Nation.

OK, let’s see the evidence for that assertion.

Using prediction markets to estimate the reproducibility of scientific research - PMC

There’s one.

But obviously it’s not a guarantee if you don’t know what you’re doing. We also have documentation on where these methods fall short, such as when it’s based on exponential growth, rare events, or something else that humans are bad at understanding. Infectious Disease Forecasting.

But again, good statisticians are prepared to address those things.

And you have no idea of the mechanisms that shape that market.

That’s even better. If I don’t understand the mechanisms shaping the market, I won’t be able to correctly identify predictive variables for my model. In that case, I would be better off trusting the prediction market.

Obviously it would be better if the person building the model understood the mechanisms… but that takes time and money. If you’re managing 30 models, that might not be worth it.

You probably live in a blue area. (Most people live in a blue area.) The actual situation is that we’ve polarized. People around you, in the blue area, have moved left. People elsewhere, in the red areas, have moved right.

Pew Research for some graphics.

In certain ways, this has been a victory for civil liberties. Gay people from small towns can move to a place where they might have entire neighborhoods of likeminded people. Trans people from small towns can move to a place where they won’t be shot on sight. Hell, someone in NYC who suddenly finds Jesus can go to a smaller town where no one will make fun of them for proselytizing AND they can hang out with likeminded people AND they get cheaper rent.

But it’s also more dangerous than it has ever been to be an immigrant. Wealth inequality has been rising. Increases in wages has been vastly outpaced by increases in the cost of housing and healthcare, and combined with inflation, we’re making more units of USD, sure, but we aren’t able to sustain any better a quality of life. Corporate Taxes were increased for small companies, and cut for large companies.

Depending on whether you’re more focused on the kinds of people living around you, or on the wide-reaching systemic changes that have been taking place, you’re going to notice different things. The really really important stuff that has shifted to the right is kind of boring, so you wouldn’t have seen much reporting on it.

If the contract isn’t something that meets the criteria for an efficient market, then yeah, it’s not something that can be used to give reasonable probabilities.

But for something like, winner of the democratic presidential primary, or the proce of gold in a month… then it’s genuinely a better predictive model than what a statistician would be able to come up with.

It doesn’t provide anything beneficial to anyone but its owners.

For statistics purposes, it gives me something incredibly beneficial. Simply by knowing the price of a contract, I can know with decent accuracy how likely something is to happen.

If you’re not in the field, you wouldn’t necessarily appreciate how valuable that is.

I third Linux mint.

Well, it’s the aggregated opinion of people who use the site. Kalshi doesn’t set the price; people making the bets set the price based on the odds others are willing to accept.

There’s a sampling bias for sure, but since the odds given for this bet are based on how much people are willing to pay for that bet, this gives a very good approximation for how people actually feel about something.

It actually ends up being more reliable than most opinion polls in that way.

For jalapeños and other peppers, the pithy center is where most of the pungency comes from. It’s also more bitter than the rear of the pepper. If you chop into quarters lengthwise, it’s easy to cut the seeds and pith away from the flesh. You’re the left with a milder, sweeter result.

… in case you’re in an experimental mood.

shit like onions and actually use some real fucking spices from India and Mexico

… but… India eats a lot of onions… because as great as the spices are, onions are also great. You can have both. You should have both.

They included the Spotify logo. It’s just <insert song here> rather than labelling the picture as “Fortunate Sons”.

It’s okay to say you don’t know the answer but one is obviously not the right one. Not everything can be known.

To be clear, I’m not asking you to provide a “correct” solution because I don’t know. YOU said someone was “intentionally failing to acknowledge [your] point about her “solution” being wrong.”

You don’t actually have a solution, and for you to pile blame onto someone who is already subjugated by a cruel government is just doubling the cruelty.

But if I were that involved…

That’s easy to say when we’re talking about one specific person in one specific high profile case. How many times do you think this kind of thing has happened since 2022?

How about this… instead of patting yourself on the back for “would’ve done the right thing,” when you already did nothing… you just… keep doing and saying nothing? Because you want these restrictive laws to be changed, right? You want this problem to have never been an option because she was able to just go to a doctor first, right?

Saying and doing nothing is more helpful for making that change, than you entering this conversation by blaming the victim of bad policy.

… Let’s unpack this.

1. Person points out this is just another case of wealthy and powerful people stirring up trouble between two groups of people. This is easy because people are easy to trick. If the headline is to be believed, even AOC, who isn’t stupid, believes boomers are the source of the problem.

2. You point out that, based on the people you know, there’s a conflict between boomers and millennials.

but… that’s not proof that the source of the problem actually IS either group. It’s still the case that this conflict is caused by a third group of people who have a vested interest in making sure the poors fight each other.

We all agree what got here there. No need to repeat that.

I disagree. I think it’s worth repeating that the STATE failed. I think it’s worth repeating that I hold the STATE to a higher degree of scrutiny than I hold a desperate teenager. The reason I think this should be repeated is that some people only understand policy in terms of rational people making rational decisions, when that describes absolutely no one who has ever lived.

The policy is bad, in part, because it will cause people to make mistakes.

The correct solution would have been pretty much anything that…

I don’t need every solution to be listed. I just want one specific solution that you think is the/a correct solution.

What would a correct solution have looked like, in your opinion?

My opinion is: this should have been a decision involving a doctor, but the state made that impossible. Whether she made a bad decision or not, the state failed first, and I, personally, hold the failure of the state to a higher level of scrutiny than the failure of a pregnant teenager.