Elucidations

In this episode, Matt and Joseph sit down with Robin Hanson, Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, to discuss prediction markets. A prediction market is a kind of betting market, wherein people place bets on whether or not some future event is going to happen by investing in market shares associated with that event. If the event happens, the people who predicted it correctly get paid. If not, they lose the money they invested. So far, so good: all that is pretty normal for a betting market. But in the case of a prediction market, there is a further twist. Before the future comes to pass and the people who guessed it correctly get paid, there’s a mathematical formula you can use, based on all the bets that have been placed so far, to determine what the probability of that event happening is. In other words, before the payout, the current prices of all shares in market give us the ability to subtly aggregate the wisdom of every individual speculator into a combined judgment about what is probably going to happen.So what, you might think. Well, it turns out that this system for forecasting the future is unusually accurate, particularly when it comes to making the most difficult predictions about the behavior of large, complex systems. And so, for several decades now, our guest has been thinking hard about how can we leverage the information provided by various prediction markets to assist with a wide range of challenging forecasting tasks that might nonetheless be important to do.Although prediction markets have mostly been set up, thus far, to determine the outcomes of things like elections or sporting events, Robin Hanson thinks they can be also be used for more ambitious purposes. One small-scale example is: the board of a public corporation could use a variation on a prediction market (called a decision market) to make decisions about whether to hire a new CEO. A bolder example would be a new system of government he calls futarchy, in which legislators abandon their role of drafting and passing legislation, and instead turn their attention to coming up with precise, measurable definitions of success. Each individual question about what policies to pass when can then be adjudicated by prediction and decision markets, which require measurable definitions of success to function.Robin Hanson is always abrim with fresh ideas, and it was a pleasure talking to him. I hope you enjoy our conversation.Matt Teichman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode, Matt Teichman and Joseph Diller sit down with Oliver Traldi (University of Toledo, Mercatus Center) to talk about political expertise.What does it mean to be an expert in something? Our guest opens by noting that we use the term expert in two different ways: in the normal sense, a person is an expert in something if they know a lot about it, but in the social sense, a person is an expert in something if they have the social status of knowing a lot about it—like maybe they have a lot of degrees and credentials. Although those two things can go together, they don’t necessarily in every case: there are autodidacts who build up a deep understanding of a topic on their own, and there are people who squeak through the educational system without really learning anything.What about a political expert? One way to get to what a political expert would be is to think about what it means to be political. There are lots of different ways that people have tried to define the world political, but Traldi thinks a topic is generally considered political when there is disagreement or controversy associated with it. Particularly if the disagreement is in some way emotionally charged.So a political expert would be someone who knows a lot about areas that there is some broad disagreement about. And now, if you think of political expertise in that way, assuming we are talking about real expertise and not just the social kind, it seems there are factors that conspire to make it unlikely. For example, most of the people who are in a position to have inside information about how a political system works are themselves political actors, which means that everything they say is going to either have ulterior motives or seem like it does. This makes genuine political expertise rare to obtain, and elusive to identify when it does.This was a partcularly fun conversation to have, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed having it.Matt Teichman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last episode, we talked about free speech, and this time, we sit down with Rebecca Lowe (Mercatus Center) to discuss the related but slightly different topic of speaking freely. Speaking freely: the thing you feel entitled to do when a superior says to you: “you may speak freely.” But although speaking freely is the phenomenon our guest is interested in characterizing, rather than trying to characterize it directly, her approach is to get granular about what it means not to speak freely. What are the different ways you might be blocked from saying what you would otherwise say, if you were fully unfettered?Rebecca Lowe discusses three broad categories of failing to speak freely. Type 1 is where you lack the capacity either to utter words or to determine their content, e.g. because you have laryngitis, or because someone put their hand over your mouth, or because an evil demon controls everything you say. Type 2 is where you’re able to speak, and you’re able to control what you say, but something is preventing you from communicating in the way you’ve decided to, e.g. when you want to call your friend, but your phone battery is dead. Type 3 is where you’re able to speak, you’re able to control what you say, and the situation allows you to communicate in the way you’ve decided to, but you refrain from speaking your mind because of some perceived risk, e.g. when you want to suggest your friend dump her boyfriend, but hold back because you’re worried she’s going to get offended.One subtlety of these categories is that they are not logically independent. If you’re blocked from speaking freely in the Type 1 way, you’re thereby also blocked from speaking freely in the Type 2 and Type 3 ways. And if you’re blocked from speaking freely in the Type 2 way, you’re thereby also blocked from speaking freely in the Type 3 way. The converse doesn’t hold: for example, as our bad boyfriend example emphasized, you can be blocked from speaking in the Type 3 way without being blocked from speaking in the Type 1 way. Indeed, as Rebecca emphasizes, it’s only people who can speak in the Type 1 way who can be blocked from speaking in the Type 3 way!In this episode, our guest argues that the public conversation about a person’s right to speak their mind would go more smoothly if we tried to keep these distinctions in view. That is, whenever we feel indignant about someone’s ability to speak being suppressed, we should consider the details of the situation. Which of these three types of obstructions was it? Was the person able to speak their mind in the situation? Then, we can consider whether they were entitled to do so. Generally we are, but it seems there are certain exception cases. The hope is that by breaking down what is at issue in any particular case we’re discussing, we’ll arrive at a better understanding of what its moral lessons are.It was a fun and lively conversation, and I hope you enjoy it! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the latest episode of Elucidations, Greg Salmieri (University of Texas) joins us once again, this time to discuss freedom of speech.Free speech talk has been in the air, on the internet, for the past decade. But what exactly is going on with freedom of speech? Do I have the right to criticize my alderman’s second term on my blog without getting thrown in jail? Do I have the right to publish cartoons that make fun of venerated religious figures without being physically attacked Do I have the right to tell my work colleagues who I voted for in the last election without getting fired? Do I have the right to express an opinion on whether R2-D2 or BB-8 is the superior Star Wars droid, without getting kicked out a group chat I have going with my friends? Which of these things is a right and which isn’t? What even is a right?Our esteemed guest offers a few suggestions to help us navigate these questions. One core suggestion is that we should think of a right as something defining spheres of action: having the right to do something means that on such and such a question, deciding how to act and then acting that way is my purview, rather than anyone else’s. It doesn’t mean that every possible decision I make is the right one. I could have the right to make a given decision, even if the actual decision I end up making in that case ends up being morally wrong; that doesn’t change the fact that it would also be morally wrong to block me from making it. For instance, even if I decide to regularly do drugs, knowing that it will turn into a harmful habit, that doesn’t change the fact that I have the right to decide whether or not to get into drugs, and it also doesn’t mean that it would be okay for others to prevent me from making that decision.This idea of a right as tied to spheres of action and decision making leads naturally to a distinction between the different examples on our original list. I do have the right to mock revered figures, or to express unfashionable political views, without being physically attacked or thrown in jail. However, there is no such thing as the right to say whatever you want to your friends in a group chat, without getting kicked out. Indeed, if there are any rights in the vicinity of that question, it’s your friends who have the right to decide who they want to associate with and invite to their group chats. Why is that? The idea is that you aren’t being physically forced away from a decision that’s in your purview. If your friends don’t want you in their group chat, it’s their prerogative, and it would probably be best for you to find a group chat in which your hot takes on droids would be received more favorably.Salmieri then goes on to argue that similar reasoning applies to both social media platforms and workplaces. The overall view that emerges is that the right to free speech is central and important, but that in recent discourse, it has strangely been extended beyond its natural reach.I found this to be an illuminating conversation that had a big impact on how I think about freedom of speech. I hope you enjoy it.Matt Teichman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the latest episode of Elucidations, Sam Enright (Progress Ireland, The Fitzwilliam) instructs us in the delicate art of learning forever. If you’re one of those people who responds well to formal education, chances are you’ve spent 10-20 years of your life as a student. When you finally graduate, it can feel jarring, like you’re kissing all this efficient infrastructure for mastering difficult skills goodbye. How are you going to keep learning, without a teacher you can pester with questions in the classroom, without regular feedback on homework assignments, and without exams? Sam Enright is here to tell you that just because you’re moving into the next phase of your life, that doesn’t mean you need to turn your back on the learning experience.In this episode, he discusses his study regimen, which ranges over philosophy, history, economics, math, and computer science, via a couple different formats that are easier to integrate into your everyday life than full-time study in the classroom. The first is something called spaced repetition. This is a method that involves repeating your study practice less and less frequently over time, in order to maximize your direct recall ability. The version that our guest practices involves using software that leans into quizzing you more often on whatever you have the most trouble with, and less often on whatever you have the least trouble with. The quiz questions are of your design, and every time you answer one, you’re given the opportunity to revise it for the future. This allows you to update your study materials over time in light of the expertise you accrue.Another method Sam Enright recommends is reading groups. Echoing similar recommendations from the Elucidations podcast in Episode 126, our guest tells us about a recurring reading group he runs in Ireland that spans a wide variety of disciplines. The key here is to select reading material that is too difficult for you to fully make sense of on your own, and to establish a culture of staying on topic. Sam Enright’s reading group has been in existence for years now and attracts researchers from all over.Finally, our guest discusses how he is able to use AI chatbots to supplement the reading process and drill deeper. In addition to traditional techniques such as notetaking, being able to upload an entire text into a chatbot’s context window and then ask it questions about what you’re reading allows you to explore the terrain it opens up interactively. You can restate your understanding of what you just read, invite the chatbot to identify mistakes in your summary, revisit the parts of the original text that are relevant to those mistakes, and so forth. Interestingly, he even reports having success when the platform he is using hallucinates a little, because trying to sniff those hallucations out allows him to cultivate the kind of skeptical attitude that makes reading itself a bit more like the classroom experience.It was a tremendously fun discussion for me to have, and I hope you enjoy it.Matt Teichman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.