John Tierney responds to Chris Masse —but John Tierney is still mistaken about the real social utility of the InTrade prediction markets.

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My second remark to John Tierney:

“I was impressed to see”
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You are too easily impressed. The nature of the prediction markets is to aggregate information quickly. Traders are very well informed (they do read Nate Silver and Electoral-Vote.com), and do anticipate quickly. That’s a given. From there, if you want to demonstrate the real social utility of the prediction markets, you should tell what is the benefit of watching the probabilities of the prediction markets in a context where the polls, the state poll aggregators and the political blogs did a very good job in the 2008 US elections. Just to say that the prediction markets did aggregate the new information quickly is not enough —that’s what the prediction markets do as a day job. To assess the prediction markets, you should put them in a social context.

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Previously

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