Hi! I’m the person that wrote that Manifold newsletter. My opinion: you’re totally right, and it was sloppy to include that as justification that Whitmer was a reasonable choice.
In the counterfactual universe where that conditional market didn’t exist, I might have written that section anyway; it started because I personally believed that a Harris-Whitmer ticket would have about those odds, and it just so happened that the conditional market agreed so I cited it. (In my head it was fine because Whitmer had some chance to be the VP in the past, so the odds couldn’t be totally garbage, but any sense of internal ranking among the contenders was pretty silly.) I’m glad I gave it some disclaimer, but I think it wasn’t a strong enough disclaimer.
As mentioned below, I think conditional markets aren’t always useless; especially those with a >25% chance of occurring and where the correlation-causation issues aren’t too severe. But I’m embarrassed Manifold was promoting this one so much, and I’ll try to fight to make the site more intellectually honest going forward.
Thanks for raising this issue! (…and Whitmer’s probability)
I’m really impressed with your grace in writing this comment (as well as the one you wrote on the market itself), and it makes me feel better about Manifold’s public epistemics.
Hi! I’m the person that wrote that Manifold newsletter. My opinion: you’re totally right, and it was sloppy to include that as justification that Whitmer was a reasonable choice.
In the counterfactual universe where that conditional market didn’t exist, I might have written that section anyway; it started because I personally believed that a Harris-Whitmer ticket would have about those odds, and it just so happened that the conditional market agreed so I cited it. (In my head it was fine because Whitmer had some chance to be the VP in the past, so the odds couldn’t be totally garbage, but any sense of internal ranking among the contenders was pretty silly.) I’m glad I gave it some disclaimer, but I think it wasn’t a strong enough disclaimer.
As mentioned below, I think conditional markets aren’t always useless; especially those with a >25% chance of occurring and where the correlation-causation issues aren’t too severe. But I’m embarrassed Manifold was promoting this one so much, and I’ll try to fight to make the site more intellectually honest going forward.
Thanks for raising this issue! (…and Whitmer’s probability)
I’m really impressed with your grace in writing this comment (as well as the one you wrote on the market itself), and it makes me feel better about Manifold’s public epistemics.