Betting with real money is definitely a useful way of probing at your own confidence (I don’t do it much at all due to general underconfidence, but it’s sure helped me nail down the feeling of being really sure of something), and a lot of my rationalist friends do it on a handshake-agreement basis. However, any way of formalizing this would turn LW (or whatever institution) into a gambling site, which is illegal :/
There may be some creative non-formal solutions though.
On one end of the spectrum you could have a token system and leave it up to the users to figure out actually exchanging money themselves (a lot of poker apps do this).
Getting less hands-on, you could do away with the tokens and just act as a matchmaker, getting two parties who want to make a bet in touch with each other and they could handle it from there.
Getting even less hands-on, you could just function as a place to discuss bets you may want to make in the real world. Eg. sports betting or stock picking (I guess there’s not too many examples of this).
There could be ways of making it legal given that we’re a non-profit with somewhat academic interests. (By “making” I mean actually changing the law or getting a No-Action Letter.) Most people who do gambling online do it for profit, which is where things get tricky.
Betting with real money is definitely a useful way of probing at your own confidence (I don’t do it much at all due to general underconfidence, but it’s sure helped me nail down the feeling of being really sure of something), and a lot of my rationalist friends do it on a handshake-agreement basis. However, any way of formalizing this would turn LW (or whatever institution) into a gambling site, which is illegal :/
There may be some creative non-formal solutions though.
On one end of the spectrum you could have a token system and leave it up to the users to figure out actually exchanging money themselves (a lot of poker apps do this).
Getting less hands-on, you could do away with the tokens and just act as a matchmaker, getting two parties who want to make a bet in touch with each other and they could handle it from there.
Getting even less hands-on, you could just function as a place to discuss bets you may want to make in the real world. Eg. sports betting or stock picking (I guess there’s not too many examples of this).
There could be ways of making it legal given that we’re a non-profit with somewhat academic interests. (By “making” I mean actually changing the law or getting a No-Action Letter.) Most people who do gambling online do it for profit, which is where things get tricky.