Midas Oracle .ORG » Philanthropy

About the richest 1% of Americans who own roughly half of the entire nation’s wealth

Chris F. Masse — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:03:16 +0000

Born Rich – by Jamie Johnson

The One Percent – by Jamie Johnson

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Peter Diamandis’s X Prize Foundation, founded in 1996 to usher in an era of private space flight, has brought a new era of innovation through competition along with it.

Chris F. Masse — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:02:56 +0000

“In 1997, the total value of philanthropic prizes with purses of $100,000 or more was roughly $74 million. Today that number is $315 million.“

When you ask for money, you get advice. And when you ask for advice, you might get money.

Chris F. Masse — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:53:44 +0000

Making the Web works for science as it does for culture and commerce

Chris F. Masse — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:54:18 +0000

Creative Commons’ Science Project

Open Innovation

It is something I will investigate more in conjunction with my project about The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets.

Google vs. Prediction Markets — Which of the 2 will detect the flu, first?

Chris F. Masse — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:26:30 +0000

An Irish research team hopes to make accurate forecasts of key public health indicators.

University College Cork (UCC) School of Medicine + Intrade

Dr Dylan Evans:

Prediction markets are [specialized], small-scale financial markets operated to predict future events. The idea is that the collected knowledge of many people, each with a different perspective, will be more accurate than an individual or small group or even experts.

When they have been used to predict the outcomes of political elections, prediction markets have been found to be more accurate than alternative methods of forecasting.

The obvious area to look at in the first instance is infectious disease, but we plan to extend our research into many other areas of public health. At the moment, people do not get data on infectious disease until it’s a couple of weeks out of date and we need to get it quicker.

Dylan Evans’ website

My opinion:

To assess the benefits (if any) of the prediction markets used as forecasting tools for public health, researchers will have to compare them with the experts… and with the “Google Flu Trends” web service, which is entirely free of charge and free of advertising (being sponsored by the Google Foundation). Does not sound good for the prediction markets.
The irony is that it’s our prediction market researchers (David Pennock and his accomplices) who gave weight to this non-market tool. — Pennock = Treator …!!… [ - Joke. ]

APPENDIX:

- Iowa Health Prediction Market

- Google Flu Trends

- See also: Google Foundation on “Predict and Prevent”.

- Google Trends

- David Pennock on the fact that flu-related searches on the Web are precise predictors of the upcoming influenza outbreaks.

- BBC

- New York Times

- WSJ Health blog

Subsidizing real-money prediction markets and real-money conditional prediction markets

Chris F. Masse — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:41:16 +0000

Should Google subsidize the Lunar X Prize contract on InTrade?

John Salvatier,

Our good friend Bo Cowgill might have already re-created those prediction markets on Google’s internal prediction exchange at a marginal cost of zero US dollar. No need for him to “subsidize” external prediction markets.

[As an appendix, I precise that I am in favor of opening the enterprise prediction markets to external traders, for some questions.]

Subsidizing prediction markets is an old Robin Hanson idea that carries quite a heavy price tag.

Conditional prediction markets is a great idea on the paper. Many people (e.g., Mike Linksvayer) like the idea. However, here is what the uncritical Robin Hanson fanboys blogging on Overcoming Whatever won’t tell you:

The first problem is that nobody trades those things.

The second problem is that subsidizing those conditional prediction markets costs an arm and a leg.

The third problem is that no major news media outlet has ever quoted the prediction market prices / probabilities generated by those conditional prediction markets.

Peter McCluskey could have rent a French mistress (or a French gigolo) for a full year with all the money he is spending on Robin Hanson’s idea. Or vaccinated the whole African continent against Malaria. See Peter’s comment, at the middle of the webpage, here.

Philanthropy and prediction markets are not mixing well —yet.

Independent Institute’s weak blog post on prediction markets

Mike Linksvayer — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:34:32 +0000

I was happy to notice that the Independent Institute, the pro-market think tank that published Entrepreneurial Economics in 2002, featuring a Robin Hanson chapter on decision markets (and much else good), published a blog post titled Forget Polls: Look at Prediction Markets on the Election. Unfortunately, while the post mentions prediction markets, they are only used as a jumping off point for an oft-repeated and boring argument that voters ought consider candidates outside the dominant parties.

Sadly, I think the think tank question I posed at the end of 2006 is still no: When has a pro-market think tank ever subjected its policy recommendations to market evaluation?

So, I’ll extend the donation offer made in that post through the end of 2009.

Why Emile Servan-Schreiber is on to something with Bet 2 Give —and why InTrade, TradeSports and BetFair should each have a philanthropy wallet.

Chris F. Masse — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:19:07 +0000

Bet 2 Give

BetFair Wallets

??? charity-driven prediction markets OR social issue prediction markets ???

Chris F. Masse — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:18:17 +0000

BOTH.

But, contrary to what Lucy Berholtz thinks, the former will go further than the latter —in my view.

My thoughts about the Financial Times article on Bet2Give:

I have said from day one that it’s a great idea.
This is a “unique” concept… until InTrade-TradeSports, Betdaq and BetFair-TradeSports decide to create a charity wallet for their traders. Complex, sure, but that might come, one day.
I have the highest esteem for Lucy Berholtz, generally, but I’m with Emile Servan-Schreiber on the idea that Bet2Give is not a simple marketing trick. All the money but a small percentage goes to the traders’ selected foundations. If all US betting were organized that way, that would mean a huge windfall for US foundations.
Tyler Cowen makes sense.
As for LongBets, it’s a failed experiment in my judgment. Too many one-sided “predictions” for only a fistful of agreed “bets”.

The Bet2Give real-money betting exchange could facilitate the sponsoring of socially valuable prediction markets by foundations and think tanks.

Chris F. Masse — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:59:47 +0000

Could Emile Servan-Schreiber push his Bet2Give concept a bit further?

I’m thinking of something, having in mind the LongBets experiment. Bet2Give lets traders select the charity of their choice. Good. But can’t we go further than that? Why not letting some people (like Robin Hanson and his gullible fanboys like Chris Hibbert ) create some long-term, socially valuable prediction markets, all this funded by foundations or think tanks’ money (since the money will never leave the non-for-profit world, anyway). I mean, if AEI-Brookings funded the experiment, the subsidized traders could designate AEI-Brookings as the recipient of the trading winnings, right? So, the AEI-Brookings money would indeed be used for the trading, but, in the end, it would cost AEI-Brookings only some trading fees (5 cents for each dollar).

And, I’d like to see more interactions between blogs and prediction markets. In the scenario above, there would be a strong incentive to do just that from the part of all those crazy blogging experimental economists, don’t you think? Those hyper inflated egos will fire blog posts like crazy about their ongoing experiments at Bet2Give, and that would help the marketing of those experimental prediction markets.

Bet2Give is a too good idea to bet let it in the hands of Emile Servan-Schreiber. Does EJSS have what it takes to push the Bet2Give concept further? (EJSS is much smarter than most people in the field of prediction markets, but that’s not enough. He is not crazy enough.) I suggest that Bet2Give be declared of international social utility and be run by the Organization of the United Nations.

Previous: Here’s how Bet2Give explains what a prediction market is to its prospects.