Leftist bloggers and media’s backlash at the prediction markets - REDUX
Chris F. Masse November 13th, 2006
The leftist bloggers and media are conducting a repeat of the Moscow Trials. They bring in all evidence required for conviction (SENATE.GOP.2006), but they conscientiously leave out everything that pleads for acquittal (HOUSE.GOP.2006 + the individual races).
Whatever happened to… The Wisdom of Crowds? - Prediction markets flunk the democracy test. - [SENATE.GOP.2006 at TradeSports-InTrade] - by The Register - 2006-11-11
[About TradeSports's SENATE.GOP.2006] This week however the people spoke - and the markets failed.
My Take:
Physicists tell us that the future can’t be predicted for sure because:
#1. We can’t model everything completely, yet.
#2. We can’t measure anything precisely (so as to feed the models).
#3. We can’t reverse our psychological arrow of time, so as to be informed by our own future mind. (Don’t pay any attention to that impostor who says he can.)
Thus, it’s totally absurd to expect the prediction markets to do what physics says cannot be done —predicting the future with 100% accuracy. Prediction markets should not aim at absolute accuracy (against the real-world outcome), but at relative accuracy (relative to comparable institutions’s predictions).
Jason Ruspini expressed a similar opinion, today. (See his fifth paragraph.)
Previous Blog Posts:
- Leftist bloggers’s backlash at the prediction markets - Election Day 2006 + 2
- Barry Ritholtz thinks that, maybe, the prediction markets died on Election Day 2006.
Well, there is the parallel worlds option.
This is that all possible potential future universes actually exist. Therefore it is possible to be informed of potential futures, but not possible to select which of those futures one will visit (as a consequence of one’s knowledge).
Interestingly, it is possible to be informed of a future in which one was informed of the future, but unfortunately that will not be a future one can visit.
So, you can know a future you cannot visit, or you can visit a future you cannot know.