Three reasons. 1) Other people can also see your predictions and see if your predictions are worth paying attention to. 2) It helps you become less overconfident. 3) If you keep mispredicting in some specific category then you realize you need to rethink your basic premises about that area.
1) Who cares what other people think? Why should I help them if I have good predictions, or hurt them if I don’t? I don’t feel their joy or pain. I could see the necessity if I was receiving scorn, but I’m generally respected. Why try to adjust that?
2) Confidence makes happiness, right? I’m generally confident. Some part of that probably isn’t deserved. Why find out?
3) I don’t though, or if I do I don’t know about it. Why find out? I’d be distressed.
Well, sure if WalterL exists in a complete island and has no interest in getting other humans to pay attention to your predictions about the world then 1 doesn’t terribly matter. As for 2, this seems to be essentially an ignorance-is-bliss argument which if you are convinced of, I’m not sure why you are on LW at all. Moreover, it isn’t likely to be true: being overconfident can cause real harm- it makes one more likely to make decisions that one shouldn’t (for example: if you are overconfident in your investment ability, then you will actually lose money). 3) Seems to fall into a general value difference: services like PredictionBook are for people who want to know that they are actually modeling the world better. If you have to actively put blinders on to convince yourself you have a good model of the world, and you are ok with that, then there’s really not much to say. But then why are you even here?
Three reasons. 1) Other people can also see your predictions and see if your predictions are worth paying attention to. 2) It helps you become less overconfident. 3) If you keep mispredicting in some specific category then you realize you need to rethink your basic premises about that area.
Sure, but:
1) Who cares what other people think? Why should I help them if I have good predictions, or hurt them if I don’t? I don’t feel their joy or pain. I could see the necessity if I was receiving scorn, but I’m generally respected. Why try to adjust that? 2) Confidence makes happiness, right? I’m generally confident. Some part of that probably isn’t deserved. Why find out? 3) I don’t though, or if I do I don’t know about it. Why find out? I’d be distressed.
Well, sure if WalterL exists in a complete island and has no interest in getting other humans to pay attention to your predictions about the world then 1 doesn’t terribly matter. As for 2, this seems to be essentially an ignorance-is-bliss argument which if you are convinced of, I’m not sure why you are on LW at all. Moreover, it isn’t likely to be true: being overconfident can cause real harm- it makes one more likely to make decisions that one shouldn’t (for example: if you are overconfident in your investment ability, then you will actually lose money). 3) Seems to fall into a general value difference: services like PredictionBook are for people who want to know that they are actually modeling the world better. If you have to actively put blinders on to convince yourself you have a good model of the world, and you are ok with that, then there’s really not much to say. But then why are you even here?
Let me try and restate.
Instead of “why don’t you use predictionbook”, lets imagine that the question was “why don’t you use a chinup bar”. My answer is basically the same.
I’m not trying to improve what this tool improves, my arms/brain is strong enough for my purposes, and I’m not trying to go beyond those.