The Emperor of enterprise prediction markets is naked.
Robin Hanson:
I can confirm that this disinterest is real. For example, when I try to sell firms on internal prediction markets wherein employees forecast things like sales and project completion dates, such firms usually don’t doubt my claims that such forecasts are cheap and more accurate. Nevertheless, they usually aren’t interested.
How do we know, now, that Intrade’-s market price was not an accurate estimate of the probability bin Laden was killed or captured by September 2011? Is an prior estimate of 50 percent likelihood that a tossed coin will come up heads wrong if the coin comes up as “-100 percent”- heads (and not half-heads and half-tails)?
I’-m not buying Chris’-s implied definition of success and failure.
However, one might ask Robin Hanson about what the Intrade market’-s performance implies about the usefulness of his Policy Analysis Market idea.
Note that I was contrasting the InTrade-Bin-Laden failure with the high expectations set by Robin Hanson, Justin Wolfers and James Surowiecki.
Also, other than statisticians, most people don’-t have a probabilistic approach of InTrade’-s predictions. That’-s the big misunderstanding, which is one part of the big fail of the prediction markets.
In April 1989, Robin Hanson created this prediction market:
By 1/1/91 a <-1 liter device will have generated over 1 watt of power output more than input from room-T fusion, including amortized power to create/separate components.
I suppose that InTrade will be willing to float E-cat contracts. We’-ll see.
Justin Wolfers is asked the question, but I would have a different answer than his.
The reason prediction markets are not widely used in business is that their many boosters (Robin Hanson, James Surowiecki, Justin Wolfers, etc.) have exaggerated their usefulness. Just because they are objective in their wisdom does not mean that they are very useful.
Objectivity is over-rated. This is a painful lesson for the handful of young startups who swallowed the prediction market myth. Next step: the dead pool.
A commenter on his blog (Bill):
Why not experiment at GMU?
Have the students run the university using Futarchy principals. They pick the goals, then you use markets.
You can even start on a smaller scale, a class.
Report back on your experiment.
Robin Hanson debates a Mencius Moldbug on prediction markets, decision markets, and…- futarchy:
Foresight 2010 debate: Futarchy from Monica Anderson on Vimeo.
Download this post to watch the video —-if your feed reader does not show it to you.
– Robin Hanson comments on Paul Hewitt’-s blog.
– Paul Hewitt comments on Eric Crampton’-s blog.
– Paul Hewitt comments on Robin Hanson’-s blog. Many exchanges with Robin Hanson. Read it all.
– Paul Hewitt:
[…] My point is that the case for prediction markets has not been made, at all. There is a tiny bit of proof that they are as good as alternative methods, and in a very few cases, very slightly better. Also, you need to be aware that even the slightly better prediction markets had the benefit of the alternative forecasting institution available to it. That is, the official forecasters at HP were also participants in the ever-so-slightly better prediction markets. […]
–->- I personally stay away from any discussion about conditional prediction markets (and futarchy). I prefer focusing on the ’-simple’- prediction markets.