I propose that anything that could be accomplished by public betting could be accomplished just by having an agreement with specific requirements and where whoever was wrong will come back and publicly admit it.
And sing the “I’m Very Sorry” song?
Honest question: So, would my past prize of Cheetos to a Doper who correctly guessed a troll’s banning now be verboten? Or was it wrong back then too?
Tripler
That situation was wrong on so many levels. . . but it sure was fun!!
No,
Poster 1: a, b, and c are true, therefore d.
Poster 2: naw, you must be wrong because e, f, g, h, i, j, and k are true. Here’s an article in a tabloid that claims all of those. I bet you can’t disprove it.
I’ve seen that more often than I’ve seen any other use of betting in factual disputes.
If so those were the best illegal Cheetos I’ve ever had.
Why is a bet needed at all?
Poster 1 says, I think A is true (or will become true).
Poster 2 says, I think B is true (or will become true). Let’s see what happens.
All out in the open with another Doper for everyone to see the outcome and comment on it. No betting of any kind involved.
Why does it need to be made “interesting”? Why does anyone require a tangible product to increase their satisfaction? The Dope is nothing but electrons in the first place. Those formed into words seem to be good enough to foment feuds, challenges, bans, and good old fashioned hate. Why shouldn’t simple declarations rise to the same level?
I think it is to make someone who is being intransigent to back-up that intransigence.
It is not to make a discussion more spicy just cuz.
The tax on bullshit aspect is not actually betting according to definition. Betting would require risking something of value on the outcome of a future unpredictable event. Risking something of value on an established matter of fact is not betting. It may be stupid, but it’s not betting.
IIRC the mods did say that betting quatloos or other fantasy “money” was okay.
So I bet 100000 quatloos this thread will be closed within a week! 
The most pervasive and harmful cognitive failure is our inability to assess new facts and evidence fairly, our inability to change our minds. I tend to think that demanding that someone stake money is likely to bond them even more irreversibly to their views.
I suppose your idea is not that it will change their mind, but that it might make them fuck off in a sulk, so that other people are not drawn into their vortex of ignorance?
Sorry…to be clear (and I mentioned this in an earlier post) I do not support betting. A mod way back politely made the case and I took the hint.
I am just talking about why it might seem worth doing.
I was unclear. I am NOT advocating betting.
I am advocating betting.
Most of what we do here is not subject to proof, mathematical or otherwise. It involves the weighing of evidence. Even in GQ. Friendly bets can clarify matters, via the setting of odds. They also provide a very limited degree of public accountability (especially in a pseudo-anonymous environment), something that a PM won’t do.
This isn’t about making money, and it isn’t about flashing dollar bills. There are plenty of ways to do that without betting. From my June 2020 post:
It’s easy to make a prediction, to assert that something will happen. But a bet - or really the setting of odds - focuses the mind and can clarify the underlying issues. I once challenged Bricker by writing, “Gee guy, you seem pretty confident. Will you give me 10:1 odds?” He replied something like, “I’m not 10:1 confident. I’m even money confident”. Seen in that light, our differences were less than they might have first appeared. (By the way, that’s how you handle folks who use betting as a bullying tool. Ask them for 200:1 odds if they are so confident.) Chronos and Betting - #102 by Measure_for_Measure
I don’t object to rules about hounding people on bets. Or maybe I do (because it’s so easy to handle- see the quote) , but let’s take things one step at a time.
So contra LSLGuy, betting doesn’t have to be an insult, anymore than any request for accountability (eg a picture ID at the DMV or local tavern) is an insult. That said, a perfectly reasonable response would be, “I have no desire to set up an account over at longbets.org, and this board has had bad experiences enforcing bets. So they won’t do it. Tough luck dude: you’re going to have to earn your quatloos elsewhere.”
Let me drill down a little, by quoting the GD/Pol specific rule (h/t hendo):
No betting. Gambling between posters in GD and Politics and Elections over debate outcomes or real world events is forbidden. In the past we’ve had posters use this as a rhetorical device to abuse other posters and accuse them of lacking the courage of their convictions. It’s a jerk move we have decided to no longer allow.
Me: it’s not necessarily a jerk move. All my conversations about betting on this board, including the one with Bricker, were civil. I’ve never engaged in a bet here, but I believe discussions of them have been illuminating.
Economists even have a label for this concept. It’s called revealed preference. Talk is cheap: for lols, here’s one working paper on the subject
This is not about a love of gambling. It’s about a useful tool for clarifying one’s position. If the board objects to haranguing, then it should have a rule against haranguing. That would leave scope for this useful ignorance-fighting tool.
Ok, this is a very good point. I agree that the odds at which someone is prepared to accept a bet gives an objective measure of their true level of conviction.
I’m not sure that’s true. I’m 90% sure Labour will win the next UK election. If you offered me a £100 bet at even odds that Labour would not win, I’d take it. I’d even take a £200/£100 bet. But I can afford to lose £200. Make it £20,000 though and it’s pretty uncomfortable. I’d have to make sacrifices to pay off a £20,000 loss. I’d really like the £10,000 if Labour wins, but that risk factor is much more apparent. Make it £200,000 and I’m not taking the bet. Mathematically, that’s a bad choice. But behavioural economics explains the rationality of the decision. I’d feel the harm of the loss much more than I’d feel the benefit of the gain, even if I believed the gain was much more likely.
I believe that was the rationale behind the decision to ban gambling in the SDMB. The thresholds at which people were comfortable making bets were NOT an “objective measure of their true level of conviction”. The thresholds were influenced by externalities that had nothing to do with the subject of the bet.
Note that I believe the above betting thresholds were hypothetical. I don’t think there were any large bets that someone backed down from for a reason of personal finances. I believe the moderators saw betting possibly trending that way and acted to stop it before it could occur.
Yes, I should have been clearer. As I and others have said in earlier posts, wealth (along with a risk aversion factor) determines the size of bet that someone is willing to take. So it is certainly possible for a “rich bullshitting troll” to cause even more trouble if betting is allowed, by forcing people into taking uncomfortable levels of risk or backing down.
But for a size of bet that is well within someone’s risk tolerance, I think it is fair to say that the odds that they will accept are a reflection of their true conviction.
I’m not saying that this argument has convinced me that betting should be allowed. I still think the problems far outweigh any potential benefit.
I bet you’re wrong about that.
Serious question. Is using the form of rhetorical usage of bet I wrote above a problem, even though no actual bet was made?
This seems to say that an agreement on odds or statements about confidence in an opinion can be reached without any bet being made. I would certainly agree. Bets are never necessary except to spice up (not my term) an argument.
FTR, I would not participate in a bet where the lesser gain is $100 or more. IRL, I generally set the base amount at $1. If I want to gamble money, I go to a gambling platform (or a poker table among friends).
Risk aversion (and moreover loss aversion) is a thing. But it’s ridiculously easy to say, “I’m not going to bet large amounts.” Most posters would understand that.
There’s no setting of odds there. For even money predictions, I would support a, “Compilation of all opposing prediction”, thread on this message board.
Sounds ok, except I lack the verbal capacity to bet on quatloos (or other fictional currency) on this message board.[1] And I doubt whether management wants to allocate quatloos to posters for sake of symbolic bets. So I advocate permitting off-board nominal bets, and references here to the same.
This discussion might be moot: I’m unsure whether an appropriate off-board platform exists, though it might. But I’d say that in terms of fighting ignorance, if someone is unwilling to wager a dollar or a quarter on something, their stated preferences are most likely not genuine - as are most stated preferences! Ignoring transactions costs, which are typically large.
[1] “MfM wants to bet in a fictional currency. Ha! What a wanker!”
I was one who was badgered over my declination to accept a bet. My choice to decline to bet had nothing to do with how sure I was in the position I had assumed in the discussion. But the badgering continued over many posts to the point that I reported it – something I seldom did. It was very unpleasant.
I for one was very glad when the rules re betting were clarified.
Is it more palatable if the bet goes to the winner’s charity of choice? (A legit, registered not-for-profit)
E.G. Someone makes me donate to the NRA or I make them donate to Planned Parenthood.
And this claim right here is an excellent reason to prohibit bets. A lot of people claim, for some reason, that betting demonstrates personal conviction. But of course it doesn’t: All it demonstrates is that the person enjoys gambling. For the vast majority of bets, no conviction is involved at all, just enjoyment of gambling. Plenty of people go to casinos and have fun doing so, even while knowing full well that the odds are against them. But when people start claiming that their personal hobby demonstrates conviction, conviction that is lacking in those who have other hobbies, that’s corrosive to discourse.