________________________________
Von: Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>
An: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Gesendet: 4:09 Samstag, 31.März 2012
Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Should there be a prediction market for LENR?
<pagnu...@htdconnect.com> wrote:
And,
>having odds makers following LENR might generate a lot of public interest.
>
Sure. It sounds like fun.
#######################################
My five cents:
There are
several sorts of problems:
1) simple
problems, where the 'wisdom of crowds' applies.
Eg
estimating the number of rice-beads in a bottle.
With n=1000
estimators the average estimate gets surprisingly good, and it continuously
gets better with higher n.
To call
this 'wisdom' is highly dubious.
2) Complex,
'interest-free' problems/questions with YES/NO i.e. binary character, like 'was
there a single big bang?' (Maybe a bad example, but You get the idea).
the answer
to questions like these basically checks, if a certain way of thinking is
accepted
or not.
The 'foolishness of crowds' here already shows up.
3) Complex,
'interest-loaden' problems, where all sorts of frauds are involved in the
issue.
E.g. AGW:
'is man-made global warming real?', or 'was 911 an inside job?', or 'is LENR
real?'
Here, in
addition to (2), one has to develop an additional level of critical thinking,
by taking into account an active group of party-interests, which has a stake in
distorting the issue.
So, a
betting market in the case of
(1) is
simple and effective, but trivial. It helps to survive in everyday decisions,
but does not enlighten wrt the intricacies of the universe, so to say.
In the case
of
(2) this is
a matter of specialists. The more diverse the field, the better. Converging
diversity is the best we have in this case.
Every AGW-denier is in deep trouble, because because he ignores the converging
evidence of diverse fields, from paleoclimatology to modelling.
Any believer of LENR and simultaneously denier of AGW has not learned his
lesson.
He has a twisted mind, and should have his 'beliefs' adjusted.
In the case
of
(3) a
positive meta-group like criminologists counters the negative one, which are
the deceivers.
In the case
of the financial mess, this is Bill Black/Michael Hudson and a few others.
To DETECT a
fraud is per definition a rarer/more complicated event than to PERFORM a fraud.
This is a
rat-race. And the fraudster mostly wins, because he is faster, or detected a
method, which still works.
The
POSITIVE group is right,-at least for the initiated- but the many mechanisms of
actively promoted NEGATIVE delusion are MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE.
Think Neuromarketing, where Your emotions are
transformed into buying decisions, by shaping your belief-system.
Betting markets rely on the paradigm represented by (1) .
To apply them to problem-areas (2) and (3) woulld be foolishness squared.
Guenter
