Re: “I had expected that people would read posts and comments by other people, and take special note of comments by people who had a prior history of being right, and thereby improve their own accuracy.”
FWIW, I think that was how I originally approached the problem. Rather than trying to solve it directly, I first looked at your response, and Robin Hanson’s response. After a little reflection, I concluded that you agreed with each other—and that you had both focused on the key issues—and got the answer right.
At that time, most of the rest of the thread was people saying the problem was ambiguous and needed a bet to clear it up—and a fair bit of confusion—with very little defense of the standard answer.
Re: “I had expected that people would read posts and comments by other people, and take special note of comments by people who had a prior history of being right, and thereby improve their own accuracy.”
FWIW, I think that was how I originally approached the problem. Rather than trying to solve it directly, I first looked at your response, and Robin Hanson’s response. After a little reflection, I concluded that you agreed with each other—and that you had both focused on the key issues—and got the answer right.
At that time, most of the rest of the thread was people saying the problem was ambiguous and needed a bet to clear it up—and a fair bit of confusion—with very little defense of the standard answer.