There’s a lot of stuff that scares me about that post.
Resolution Criteria
Suppose your counterparty bets on 200:1 odds. Suppose the odds of a LW poll getting trolling results are >0.5%. Then your counterparty loses all of their alpha on that alone (because an incorrect result costs them 200× more than it costs you).
“I reserve the right to appeal to the LW community to adjudicate resolution if I believe I am being stiffed.” is too vague. If you don’t specify exactly how you plan for the LW community to adjudicate resolution, then that’s just asking for trouble. Imagine if you said “I reserve the right to the /r/cute community to adjudicate resolution of <such-and-such bet>. (Especially considering that the community is boycotting Reddit right now.)
You didn’t mention anything about “nontrivial post history”. What happens if you win the bet $100k but your counterparty refuses to pay you? Do you go to court? What if they live in Nigeria?
Weird Explanations
Some of these seem poorly phrased, from the perspective of a lawyer.
I think “astral projection” might be a legitimate altered state of consciousness, distinct from lucid dreaming.
Personally, I would not consider the discovery of a Kardashev type II or III civilization to be an ontological shock. A shock, certainly, but not an ontological one.
What is “magic”? The term is used by people like Daniel Ingram to describe stuff that seems…well…woo, but not quite insane. Also, anything which happens is a priori not paranormal.
It’s unclear whether the discovery of non-human homonids in the Amazon would resolve for or against you. Same goes for the discovery of a random dinosaur (non-bird) species that just happened to survive 70 million years. Neanderthal genes live among us.
There’s no central dogma for “standard atheist materialists”. For example, there was a time when mainstream scientists didn’t believe in lucid dreaming. I think enlightenment is in a similar state right now. It’s not like the Catholic Church which has an official opinion.
“Leftovers of an ancient civilization” technically exist, right now, all over the place. Ancient Rome. Everything from before the Bronze Age Collapse. It would be surprising to discover another one under, say, the south African jungle, but it wouldn’t be an ontological shock. There are mysterious earthworks in North America that might point to something interesting too.
“Some other unknown non-human advanced civilization on earth” ← It’s entirely plausible that dinosaurs had an agrarian civilization.
Some other explanation I’m missing that’s of a similar level of “very weird” ← Too vague.
“Merely advanced “normal” human tech would NOT count (+2 gens stealth aircraft/drones, advanced holograms/spoofing, etc)” ← This implies that “+3 gens stealth aircraft/drones” might count.
“Secret Manhattan style project with beyond next gen physics, that we had back in the 60′s” ← We’ve never had next-gen physics. Physics has always been the same. Also, this wouldn’t cause ontological shock to many “standard atheist materialists”. I’d be surprised if the USA military had nothing surprising up it’s sleeve.
“Whatever these most perplexing ufo/uap cases represent, they are likely something beyond our current paradigm” ← Way, way too vague. Does weird atmospheric phenomena (similar to ball lightning) count? It’s definitely outside the current paradigm, but it’s not a contradiction of well-established physics.
I know you don’t intend most of these interpretations, but many of them are reasonable interpretations of your literal words. I worry that you’re playing with fire here and that you could end up in some nasty disagreements when it comes to resolve your proposed bet.
Overall, I feel like you’re conflating “standard atheist materialists” with mainstream science and mainstream beliefs. They all differ slightly from each other. Some of the stuff on your list I’d bet my life against, but other bullet points are (when read literally) technically true.
That said, I really like your willingness to place wagers (especially in contradiction to the mainstream narrative) so that you actually have skin in the game. This is the way. I don’t want to discourage you.
I know I have no post history, and thus these are just words, but I claim to be a reasonable, rational person who (tries) to operates exclusively in good faith. I’ve been a lurker of LW and LW adjacent people for a few years now. I learned about lesswrong because I stumbled across eilizers work on decision theories and then subsequently got agi-safety-pilled. I considered myself a “standard materialist atheist” my entire adult life and most of my childhood.
Most of your concerns seemed to ignore that the explanations have to ultimately trace back to explaining ufo cases or are otherwise very pedantic. Yes ancient civ’s have ruins, yes dinosaurs might have been agrarian, but do either of those address uap cases today? I only win the bet if my counterparty thinks so (or LW does).
I tried in good faith to try and cut at the seems of the two world models (all prosaic, not all prosaic) as best I could. I gave multiple lexical tests to make clear what kinds of things I have in mind.
I have no intention of getting into nasty disagreements over resolution. But I agree it would be good to have the adjudication method be explicit, though I’m not sure how best to do that. In a world in which I win the bet, I figured I would be making a big post anyways laying out a bit more about me and some of this stuff. If prominent voices contest my win then I would stand down from collecting. I expect a world in which I win is also a world in which LW is pretty unanimous that I won.
You’re right, I forgot to mention the nontrivial post history in my post, an oversight on my part. That said I was only ever going to engage with people with established reputations because obviously. I reserved the right to choose who to bet with.
the resolution criteria of a bet should not rely heavily on reasonableness of participants unless the bet is very small such that both parties can tolerate misresolution. the manifold folks can tell you all about how it goes when you get this wrong, there are many seemingly obvious questions that have been derailed by technicalities, and it was not the author’s reasonableness most centrally at play. (edit: in fact, the author’s reasonableness is why the author had to say “wait… uh… according to those criteria this pretty clearly went x way, which I didn’t expect and so the resolution criteria were wrong”)
There’s a lot of stuff that scares me about that post.
Resolution Criteria
Suppose your counterparty bets on 200:1 odds. Suppose the odds of a LW poll getting trolling results are >0.5%. Then your counterparty loses all of their alpha on that alone (because an incorrect result costs them 200× more than it costs you).
“I reserve the right to appeal to the LW community to adjudicate resolution if I believe I am being stiffed.” is too vague. If you don’t specify exactly how you plan for the LW community to adjudicate resolution, then that’s just asking for trouble. Imagine if you said “I reserve the right to the /r/cute community to adjudicate resolution of <such-and-such bet>. (Especially considering that the community is boycotting Reddit right now.)
You didn’t mention anything about “nontrivial post history”. What happens if you win the bet $100k but your counterparty refuses to pay you? Do you go to court? What if they live in Nigeria?
Weird Explanations
Some of these seem poorly phrased, from the perspective of a lawyer.
I think “astral projection” might be a legitimate altered state of consciousness, distinct from lucid dreaming.
Personally, I would not consider the discovery of a Kardashev type II or III civilization to be an ontological shock. A shock, certainly, but not an ontological one.
What is “magic”? The term is used by people like Daniel Ingram to describe stuff that seems…well…woo, but not quite insane. Also, anything which happens is a priori not paranormal.
It’s unclear whether the discovery of non-human homonids in the Amazon would resolve for or against you. Same goes for the discovery of a random dinosaur (non-bird) species that just happened to survive 70 million years. Neanderthal genes live among us.
There’s no central dogma for “standard atheist materialists”. For example, there was a time when mainstream scientists didn’t believe in lucid dreaming. I think enlightenment is in a similar state right now. It’s not like the Catholic Church which has an official opinion.
“Leftovers of an ancient civilization” technically exist, right now, all over the place. Ancient Rome. Everything from before the Bronze Age Collapse. It would be surprising to discover another one under, say, the south African jungle, but it wouldn’t be an ontological shock. There are mysterious earthworks in North America that might point to something interesting too.
“Some other unknown non-human advanced civilization on earth” ← It’s entirely plausible that dinosaurs had an agrarian civilization.
Some other explanation I’m missing that’s of a similar level of “very weird” ← Too vague.
“Merely advanced “normal” human tech would NOT count (+2 gens stealth aircraft/drones, advanced holograms/spoofing, etc)” ← This implies that “+3 gens stealth aircraft/drones” might count.
“Secret Manhattan style project with beyond next gen physics, that we had back in the 60′s” ← We’ve never had next-gen physics. Physics has always been the same. Also, this wouldn’t cause ontological shock to many “standard atheist materialists”. I’d be surprised if the USA military had nothing surprising up it’s sleeve.
“Whatever these most perplexing ufo/uap cases represent, they are likely something beyond our current paradigm” ← Way, way too vague. Does weird atmospheric phenomena (similar to ball lightning) count? It’s definitely outside the current paradigm, but it’s not a contradiction of well-established physics.
I know you don’t intend most of these interpretations, but many of them are reasonable interpretations of your literal words. I worry that you’re playing with fire here and that you could end up in some nasty disagreements when it comes to resolve your proposed bet.
Overall, I feel like you’re conflating “standard atheist materialists” with mainstream science and mainstream beliefs. They all differ slightly from each other. Some of the stuff on your list I’d bet my life against, but other bullet points are (when read literally) technically true.
That said, I really like your willingness to place wagers (especially in contradiction to the mainstream narrative) so that you actually have skin in the game. This is the way. I don’t want to discourage you.
I know I have no post history, and thus these are just words, but I claim to be a reasonable, rational person who (tries) to operates exclusively in good faith. I’ve been a lurker of LW and LW adjacent people for a few years now. I learned about lesswrong because I stumbled across eilizers work on decision theories and then subsequently got agi-safety-pilled. I considered myself a “standard materialist atheist” my entire adult life and most of my childhood.
Most of your concerns seemed to ignore that the explanations have to ultimately trace back to explaining ufo cases or are otherwise very pedantic. Yes ancient civ’s have ruins, yes dinosaurs might have been agrarian, but do either of those address uap cases today? I only win the bet if my counterparty thinks so (or LW does).
I tried in good faith to try and cut at the seems of the two world models (all prosaic, not all prosaic) as best I could. I gave multiple lexical tests to make clear what kinds of things I have in mind.
I have no intention of getting into nasty disagreements over resolution. But I agree it would be good to have the adjudication method be explicit, though I’m not sure how best to do that. In a world in which I win the bet, I figured I would be making a big post anyways laying out a bit more about me and some of this stuff. If prominent voices contest my win then I would stand down from collecting. I expect a world in which I win is also a world in which LW is pretty unanimous that I won.
You’re right, I forgot to mention the nontrivial post history in my post, an oversight on my part. That said I was only ever going to engage with people with established reputations because obviously. I reserved the right to choose who to bet with.
the resolution criteria of a bet should not rely heavily on reasonableness of participants unless the bet is very small such that both parties can tolerate misresolution. the manifold folks can tell you all about how it goes when you get this wrong, there are many seemingly obvious questions that have been derailed by technicalities, and it was not the author’s reasonableness most centrally at play. (edit: in fact, the author’s reasonableness is why the author had to say “wait… uh… according to those criteria this pretty clearly went x way, which I didn’t expect and so the resolution criteria were wrong”)
I will update the post tomorrow and add more detail to address the other concerns