Even if this is true, it only heightens my part of the claim. samclem’s demurral was that the study discussed factual answers while my wager offers were generally about predictions. So taking your objections as valid for the recitation of factual answers, and the player being willing to cough up an answer he regards as bullshit in order to win the dough… the same logic doesn’t apply to predictions of future events, does it?
If I say Smith is going to win the next election, and you say Jones is going to win, how does your answer possibly change when money is on the line? See what I mean? The future event isn’t a matter of “the ‘right’ answer is really bullshit.”
I’m not at all surprised by the results of this study. As I said in a previous post I take all polling regarding partisan questions with a grain of salt since most people just want to support the home team.
However, extending this to the reason people at the dope won’t accept bets seems quite a stretch. There is a big difference between changing your answer when you are placed in a situation in which there is a financial stake and choosing to put ones self in such a position. I don’t accept internet wagers on my opinion not because I secretly know I’m wrong, rather because I don’t like to bet. I personally find that the kicking I give myself when I lose outweighs the good feeling I get when I win. Those who enjoy gambling are clearly wired the opposite way.
Secopndly, the control group in the study there was absolutely no consequence to getting the answer wrong, so the psychological hit that the partisans got from supporting their team made giving an partisan answer attractive even if they knew at some level it was BS. In the straight dope there are social consequences to getting a prediction wrong (just ask adher) so there is an incentive against putting out a BS prediction. There is of course the possibility the partisan hit gain of BSing will still out weigh the negative consequences but, depending on the wager, that is true of betting as well.
A prediction is a statement about an expected future fact. It is right or wrong with some probability. Anyone who won’t bet even money against a simple prediction, or true odds against a stated probability of outcome should be suspect. Yeah, some people don’t bet as a matter of principle. But (in my opinion) many more people know they’re full of shit.
There were a lot of bets placed that Romney would win. Romney himself was so sure he bought fireworks and didn’t write a concession speech in anticipation of victory he was sure he would win. So sure were the republicans that Romney would win that they seemed actually stunned when he lost (perhaps most famously seen in Karl Rove’s meltdown on Fox News when not accepting that Obama won Ohio and thus the election).
Thing is there were plenty of predictions that Romney was losing. Predictions that the republican echo chamber simply refused to listen to or grant any credence to. Granted it was not a 100% slam dunk for Obama but then if ti was it would not be a prediction. Still, Nate Silver gave Obama a 79% chance so if you are playing the odds Obama was a good bet (particularly since Nate Silver is a very well regarded pollster).
Or that you don’t trust the person to either skip out entirely or to try to weasel their way out of the bet. There may not be a perfect bet point such that it is both acceptable to lose the money if you are wrong (which may be around a 50% chance if you are merely making a prediction), but simultaneously having a worthwhile payout considering the time it takes to set up the bet. Not everyone has unlimited free time.
When you throw in the chance of an unfaithful bettor, the chance of an acceptable bet point becomes even smaller.
Nate Silver says this explictly in his book. He says that if two rational people disagree about a prediction, be it political or whatever, and after discussion they still can’t come to an agreement about it, then the only rational thing for them to do is to bet on the outcome.
I don’t bet because I’m not stupid with money. I also don’t stealth brag about how much I make, where some people want to show that $100 means nothing to them.
That said, if a bet is about a prediction, a sane person might not want to bet because what happens may not be the right thing. If a bet is about the decision a conservative SCOTUS will make, the decision they come to may not actually be the right one. Someone could perfectly argue a case for X, and randomly, for partisan reasons the court chooses Y. A bet in that case is meaningless, it doesn’t settle the issue of who was right. All it does is give the guy who guessed what would happen some extra money.
If it’s about an election, say a bet that Romney will win, what does that prove? If Romney won, he’d still be the worse candidate, a terrible choice and a disaster for America. Winning a bet is utterly worthless as a test. Convictions aren’t everything, you have to allow for the chance that the wrong outcome will happen.
This started out as an interesting topic, and then you had to go and ruin it with your whole “This proves you all know I’m right” bullshit.
As samclem pointed out, predictions are not facts. That someone will not bet money on their predictions doesn’t demonstrate that they don’t believe them, just that they know there’s a chance they’re wrong (since none of us can see the future). It’s just risk aversion.
As for the rest of the post minus the last two lines, I actually find this somewhat encouraging. People are perhaps somewhat less ignorant and ill-informed than they have chosen to appear. Yay?
This assumes the outcome can be unambiguously discerned. That often is not the case in many arguments. For instance do immigrants hurt or help the economy?
I disagree with this claim. There are absolutely social consequences from getting a prediction wrong in some circumstances, but in many cases, I believe wrong predictors are defended.
Take that last link. It goes to a thread I started nearly a year after Virginia passed a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In the debate leading up to that event, other posters, notably Steve_MB, argued that the passage of that amendment would cause domestic violence cases to become unprosecutable.
It didn’t.
But note the tone of that thread I started. There’s a great deal of sympathy for Steve_MB – I suspect because he was wrong but supporting a good cause, defined of course as a cause believed in by the majority of active posters here.
So, no – I don’t agree there’s a significant social cost to being wrong, unless you are already incurring the significant social cost of bucking the general trend of belief here anyway.
Interestingly, though, I believe (without proof) that the social cost of doing THAT wold be significant on the SDMB, even if the weasel were otherwise on the side of the angels in the eyes of the majority of active posters.
I have resolved to offer you comfort and condolence when I hear your sad tales of rejection and persecution by the liberal majority of this Board. However, my keyboard is beginning to wear out. If I should miss a few, please understand that my sympathy has not flagged or faltered, and I will resume my emotional support shortly.
You appear to be talking about value judgments. Most of the rest of us are talking about a predictions of fact.
“Romney will win the election” or “SCOTUS will decide X” are objective predictions of fact. They can be either accurate or inaccurate. True or false. And it’s very easy to determine in hindsight which. You can reasonably bet on this with someone who disagrees with you.
“Romney is the best candidate for president” is a value judgment. It’s not well defined. It’s not clear how we would objectively determine whether it’s correct. You can’t really bet on this statement.
Accurate predictions have value.
A prediction that Romney will win the election is not a value judgment about who would make a better president. It is a statement about the expected future. We can’t know the future, but figuring out who can predict it more accurately is useful, and bets help us differentiate people who can make accurate predictions from people who can’t.
Yes, there’s always a chance that randomness will get in the way, and your well-structured logical argument for why something should have happened falls apart in the face of reality. But you factor that into your prediction. If you can’t do better than chance, then that casts doubt on the value of well-structured logical arguments.
Better than chance requires you to be making a large number of bets to assess that. I wouldn’t bet on Obama over Romney, because (aside from the fact that I’m not self-destructive enough to wager compulsively) there was a real chance that the US Public would have voted that nimrod into office.
Aside, Bricker is talking about facts in his OP. If you bet me that Helium is the lightest element, great. But betting that trial X will go this way or that, when you have no factual information isn’t a sign of strength. It’s a bet on a football game.