I don’t think that this contest will accomplish what you (lsparrish) want it to accomplish, and assign a significant probability to it being of net negative value. This seems likely for the following reasons:
I think that the reward is a monetary incentive for people to denigrate others contributions in favor of their own (as a tactic).
I think that the reward will cause people to become emotionally invested in their own proposed solutions.
More broadly, I think that the reward may put contestants in a ‘winning’ mindset and submit/argue with this in mind, and as a result fail to optimize for effective information transfer.
I also think that the implementation details of the contest could be improved iff you still plan to hold it (which I currently disapprove of):
I think that you have failed to sufficiently specify the value set for which contestants are to optimize. Total utilitarianism? Average utilitarianism? It is reasonable to leave this open, but contestants may fail to specify this in their essays.
I would not know what to do with a Bitcoin if I were awarded one, and I believe that you underestimate the fraction of the LW readership for which this is true.
I don’t think that this contest will accomplish what you (lsparrish) want it to accomplish, and assign a significant probability to it being of net negative value. This seems likely for the following reasons:
I think that the reward is a monetary incentive for people to denigrate others contributions in favor of their own (as a tactic).
I think that the reward will cause people to become emotionally invested in their own proposed solutions.
More broadly, I think that the reward may put contestants in a ‘winning’ mindset and submit/argue with this in mind, and as a result fail to optimize for effective information transfer.
I also think that the implementation details of the contest could be improved iff you still plan to hold it (which I currently disapprove of):
I think that you have failed to sufficiently specify the value set for which contestants are to optimize. Total utilitarianism? Average utilitarianism? It is reasonable to leave this open, but contestants may fail to specify this in their essays.
I would not know what to do with a Bitcoin if I were awarded one, and I believe that you underestimate the fraction of the LW readership for which this is true.
Tapping out.