In WebMD and the Tragedy of Legible Expertise, Scott Alexander ends by saying that we should be grateful for the experts we have, but that prediction markets would still be better.
Is he right? If so, how much better would prediction markets be? Let’s do some counterfactual history. Conditional on large, liquid, free prediction markets being made suddenly available to the public in Nov 2019 (or April 2020, or any other date), what would have been the most likely pandemic outcomes? I’m interested in both vague and specific answers. Even better if you can estimate a quantity of money or life-years saved.
How would free prediction markets have altered the pandemic?
In WebMD and the Tragedy of Legible Expertise, Scott Alexander ends by saying that we should be grateful for the experts we have, but that prediction markets would still be better.
Is he right? If so, how much better would prediction markets be? Let’s do some counterfactual history. Conditional on large, liquid, free prediction markets being made suddenly available to the public in Nov 2019 (or April 2020, or any other date), what would have been the most likely pandemic outcomes? I’m interested in both vague and specific answers. Even better if you can estimate a quantity of money or life-years saved.