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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   33237 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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They aren't. But they're the best prediction tool we have.

Stonk markets only predict themselves. Unlike prediction markets which resolve and pay out to an outcome, most publicly traded companies won't go bankrupt anytime soon and pay an arbitrarily decided pittance as dividend.

Are they?

They really aren't. You could predict AI being a big deal much better by reading blogposts than looking at stock prices.

Easy to say with hindsight. What do you think looks good in the next 10 years?

Markets are pretty efficient. We as individuals are significantly less efficient.

What do you think looks good in the next 10 years?

Still AI, the market's still not pricing it in AGI

Pretty sure. If you can find something better at predictions than the market is, you should be able to make tons of money (and incidentally make the market as efficient as your source).

Not always. Yudkowsky's example of "if the world will end in ten years, and you know this, this won't help you make money" holds water. Things shaped similarly to this also tend to be hard to make money from, due to difficulty collecting winnings and/or spending them; being a nuclear doomer might mean that I'm unusually well-equipped to survive a nuclear war, but I haven't figured out a way to actively profit from it.

There's also the famous (or perhaps infamous) saying, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent". Frauds tend to go up and up and up before they come down; knowing they're fraudulent without knowing the exact timing of said fraud's discovery means you might not be able to hold out against the margin calls.

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