At 5:07 PM -0800 12/29/96, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
On Sun, 29 Dec 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
Unlike Sandy, I'm not a great believer in multi-year bets as an epistemological tool....
Tim has misstated my belief. I do think that short- or long-term bets fulfill a purpose, but it is not an epistemological one. (Tim, are you thinking of Robin or Nick?) The purpose it serves is to make pontificators more cautious in the pontifications. It's easy to gas on about subjects in which you have no economic stake; we all do that at times. The possiblity of financial loss or reward, however, encourages temperance.
Robin and Nick have even more faith in bets as a tool, but Sandy has, at least on our list, been more of a user of such bets. My problem has always been that they rarely work...in fact, of the last N such bets which were offered (e.g., by Sandy) I can't recall a single one which was ever even accepted, let alone which was settled. (And I recall "bets" offered to Phill Hallam-Baker, Dimitri Vulis, etc.) So, the thesis that pontifications are lessened is wiped out by the fact that no such bets have ever, in my memory, been accepted. If anything, those challenged to "put their money where their mouth is" almost uniformly write _more_, not less. While I accept the basic prinicple (and my income depends to a large extent on my investments, which is surely an example of putting my money where my mouth is, to a large extent), I question the usefullness in forums like ours. For obvious reasons. --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."