I opened a Foresight Exchange account today (rolf.h.d.nelson). The main purpose is to challenge myself to become a better thinker by forcing myself to think through both the sides of why future events may or may not happen. My initial plan was to buy or sell one share in each of the "U.S. News" categories. I got through about six of the items before I gave into the temptation to put all the rest of my money down on "No" for the mispriced USAGeo.
The presence of mispriced items in this play-money exchange didn't surprise me, especially for "X will happen by the year Y." Presumably people put down "Buy if it goes down to price Z" orders, and as year Y comes closer and the price drops naturally well past Z, they have little incentive to log back in and rescind their now-insane orders (especially if they've abandoned their accounts.)
What did surprise me was how *boring* the brief experience was. Most of the decisions revolved, not around profound questions of philosophy or ideology, but around peering at graphs and trying to extrapolate probabilities of non-controversial events. The poor user interface added to the boredom factor as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Rolf referred to his claim on the Overcoming Bias blog. I replied there, showing that there's a lot more movement than Rolf observed.
Post a Comment