If points could be converted to money enough to motivate real predictions, I would expect a flood of people who do nothing but information cascade to bank points, and it’s not obvious what to do about that. As it is, it felt (to me) like there was a tension between ‘score points’ and ‘make good predictions or at least don’t make noise predictions’ and that felt like a dealbreaker.
I agree that actually offering money would require incentives to avoid, essentially, sybil attacks. But making sure people don’t make “noise predictions” isn’t a useful goal—those noise predictions don’t really affect the overall metaculus prediction much, since it weights past accuracy.
If points could be converted to money enough to motivate real predictions, I would expect a flood of people who do nothing but information cascade to bank points, and it’s not obvious what to do about that. As it is, it felt (to me) like there was a tension between ‘score points’ and ‘make good predictions or at least don’t make noise predictions’ and that felt like a dealbreaker.
I agree that actually offering money would require incentives to avoid, essentially, sybil attacks. But making sure people don’t make “noise predictions” isn’t a useful goal—those noise predictions don’t really affect the overall metaculus prediction much, since it weights past accuracy.