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Is there an effort to compile this for key Senate and House races this November? Or any analogous EA effort re: competitive races. If so, please get in contact – I’d love to help.
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This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
Hello! I'm Justin Portela. I got hired by GWWC to make YouTube videos after AI in Context did such a kickass job.
My channel is using that same cinematic, high-production value beauty to talk about everything in the EA universe that isn't AI.
...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
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What do prediction markets add that polls don’t? Is there any history of them being more accurate than polling-based models such as 538’s? To the extent they are relevant my intuition is that it would be as to the lesser-known candidates, where the type of person participating in prediction markets has priced in info the average voter doesn’t have. But where average voters do have more complete information, I would rely exclusively or at least more heavily on polls.
For one thing, it's not clear how to translate polls into probabilities. Let's assume for sake of argument that when Jack is at 5% in the polls and Jill is at 4%, then Jack is necessarily more likely to win the primaries than Jill. But we still don't know: how much more likely? What are their probabilities of victory? Translating the polling into expectations (which is necessary for calculating expected value) is difficult. Better to let the prediction markets do that efficiently than to rely on my own guess.
Second, prediction markets take into account lots of other information besides the superficial polling numbers, like: who are voters 2nd and 3rd choices? Which candidate has more momentum? Which candidate is doing best in Iowa/NH? Who has more money? etc.
The reason prediction markets ever tell you something different from the polls is because they are taking into account issues like the above. Their track record is very good as I understand.