Recent posts
#21
Off Topic / Proof of Stake optimization
Last post by zack - June 11, 2016, 04:23:49 PMI am trying to increase the readability of this document. I would appreciate any questions about what doesn't make sense.
https://github.com/BumblebeeBat/FlyingFox/blob/master/docs/2_types_of_bonds.md
https://github.com/BumblebeeBat/FlyingFox/blob/master/docs/2_types_of_bonds.md
#22
Outside Work / Re: Great article on Futarchy ...
Last post by zack - June 08, 2016, 03:06:33 PMThis is an interesting idea. I will summarize.
Futarchy is often criticized because it depends on a metric like GDP that is optimized for. The people who calculate what the GDP is have a lot of power in such a system.
This paper introduces a new metric as an alternative to GDP: each citizen chooses a number between 0 and 1, and we take the average.
If the citizen is completely unsatisfied with the previous year, they choose 0. If they are completely satisfied, they choose 1.
My worry with such a system is that counting votes is an unsolved problem. There are 300,000,000 Americans.
Every system I have examined for collecting one vote per citizen has flaws in it to make cheating possible.
Futarchy is often criticized because it depends on a metric like GDP that is optimized for. The people who calculate what the GDP is have a lot of power in such a system.
This paper introduces a new metric as an alternative to GDP: each citizen chooses a number between 0 and 1, and we take the average.
If the citizen is completely unsatisfied with the previous year, they choose 0. If they are completely satisfied, they choose 1.
My worry with such a system is that counting votes is an unsolved problem. There are 300,000,000 Americans.
Every system I have examined for collecting one vote per citizen has flaws in it to make cheating possible.
#23
Outside Work / Great article on Futarchy by R...
Last post by MattGoldenberg - June 08, 2016, 03:01:23 AM #24
Advanced / Re: Market Empiricism
Last post by MattGoldenberg - May 31, 2016, 03:17:18 AMSo to me this is an issue of "square peg, round hole". As you noted, there's already a system in place (peer review) that tries to deal with this. The issue with peer review is that the peer reviewers themselves aren't being reviewed. Trying to bring in a prediction market introduces additional liquidity problems, and we already know that journals won't be willing to solve those, given that most already don't pay their reviewers.
Crystal can easily be applied to this problem, by adding the notion of reputation to each peer reviewer, and having them provide probability densities of things like replication chance, retraction chance, and correction chance. Reviewers with higher accuracy will gain more reputation, and be weighted higher in the future, so you don't need a highly populated market with lots of participants. You only need the few who have already proven they're well calibrated. If you somehow do find someone to provide money, it need not be enough to provide liquidity to a prediction market. They can just pay what the information is worth to them, then it will be distributed based on the reputation of the peer reviewers after the prediction has cleared.
Crystal can easily be applied to this problem, by adding the notion of reputation to each peer reviewer, and having them provide probability densities of things like replication chance, retraction chance, and correction chance. Reviewers with higher accuracy will gain more reputation, and be weighted higher in the future, so you don't need a highly populated market with lots of participants. You only need the few who have already proven they're well calibrated. If you somehow do find someone to provide money, it need not be enough to provide liquidity to a prediction market. They can just pay what the information is worth to them, then it will be distributed based on the reputation of the peer reviewers after the prediction has cleared.
#25
Advanced / Re: Prediction Wish List
Last post by MattGoldenberg - May 31, 2016, 03:04:41 AMPrivate Decisions:
Job Title X Expected Average Salary for New Graduates in 4 Years
Area X Expected Change in Property Value in 5 Years
Area X Expected Change in Rent in 5 Years
Philanthropy:
Additional Money Invested X Expected Change in QALYs (as measured by someone like Givewell)
Job Title X Expected Average Salary for New Graduates in 4 Years
Area X Expected Change in Property Value in 5 Years
Area X Expected Change in Rent in 5 Years
Philanthropy:
Additional Money Invested X Expected Change in QALYs (as measured by someone like Givewell)
#26
Design / Incentives / Game Theory / Re: Paying the oracle
Last post by zack - May 29, 2016, 01:42:26 AMIt sounds like Matt would prefer assurance contracts to dominant assurance contracts.
I am pretty sure that dominant assurance contracts will be easier to coordinate, and harder to censor.
Both types should be allowed.
I agree that the oracle doesn't need to participate in the assurance contract. It is for the purchasers to use.
The idea of everyone getting refunds for the price of their shares is interesting.
Augur is planning on doing this, so it is an idea we should explore. When the Augur oracle's result for a decision gets repeatedly challenged, the rep gets copied into 2 flavors. One flavor where the decision is true, and the other where it is false.
Is it actually safe to give everyone refunds at the current price? or can this be manipulated?
I am pretty sure that dominant assurance contracts will be easier to coordinate, and harder to censor.
Both types should be allowed.
I agree that the oracle doesn't need to participate in the assurance contract. It is for the purchasers to use.
The idea of everyone getting refunds for the price of their shares is interesting.
Augur is planning on doing this, so it is an idea we should explore. When the Augur oracle's result for a decision gets repeatedly challenged, the rep gets copied into 2 flavors. One flavor where the decision is true, and the other where it is false.
Is it actually safe to give everyone refunds at the current price? or can this be manipulated?
#27
Design / Incentives / Game Theory / Re: Paying the oracle
Last post by MattGoldenberg - May 28, 2016, 10:54:57 PMYes, this is the exact reply I had to Paul about the attack he mentioned, but I'll reply here instead.
I don't see this as needing to be solved by the oracle btw, outside of charging enough. Industries will implement this as a fair trade contract - If everyone in their industry doesn't pay in to get the information, then all of the individual actors get paid back, and the information doesn't get into the blockchain. This stops any individual company an industry from getting an advantage over the others in that industry.
I don't see this as needing to be solved by the oracle btw, outside of charging enough. Industries will implement this as a fair trade contract - If everyone in their industry doesn't pay in to get the information, then all of the individual actors get paid back, and the information doesn't get into the blockchain. This stops any individual company an industry from getting an advantage over the others in that industry.
#28
Design / Incentives / Game Theory / Re: A critique of paul's drive...
Last post by psztorc - May 25, 2016, 07:36:01 PMQuote from: MattGoldenberg on May 25, 2016, 04:21:58 PM
Can you walk me step by step of an example of how this works? In my mind it works like this
1. Oracle R(Real) and Oracle P(Parasite) advertise their services.
2. A company pays Oracle R to get it Data S.
3. Oracle R gets Data S
4. Oracle P steals Data S.
5. A company now pays Oracle P because it's advertising cheaper prices and has good reputation.
6. Oracle P doesn't have information to give and is revealed as a fraud.
I see no way for this game to have an equilibrium of Oracle R's price going to $0. Oracle P can only make their move after Oracle R has gotten paid, and Oracle R gets to set the price at which it gets paid. If their are multiple companies getting the same information, it can simply set the price such that many of those companies must pay it. The only way that this game has an equilibrium of $0 for Oracle R s if you switch step 2 to after step 5.
> Oracle P can only make their move after Oracle R has gotten paid
Wrong. I can say, "Regardless of how many people sign up with Blue Oracle, I (the red oracle) will charge $X and copy the Blue Oracle's answers". You can, indeed, move step 2 to after step 5.
> So firstly, a companies success isn't only dependent on how it pleases the users.
Correct. A much better definition would be "provides a sufficient return on capital employed".
If we distinguish between "flow trust" (restaurant) and "level trust" (bank), my contention is *not* that eliminating the need for "flow trust" has no value. I merely contend [1] that it has very very little marginal value, and [2] the process of removing this trust is abhorrently expensive (given how difficult it is to write secure smart contracts).
Thus, the ROCE of such projects is overwhelmingly unlikely to be sufficient. The opportunity cost of the programming labor alone is relatively astronomical.
#29
Design / Incentives / Game Theory / Re: A critique of paul's drive...
Last post by MattGoldenberg - May 25, 2016, 04:21:58 PM>The real oracle must work for free, if there exist any parasites. This is because the parasites can steal the labor of the real oracles, for free. So the equilibrium price is zero.
Can you walk me step by step of an example of how this works? In my mind it works like this
1. Oracle R(Real) and Oracle P(Parasite) advertise their services.
2. A company pays Oracle R to get it Data S.
3. Oracle R gets Data S
4. Oracle P steals Data S.
5. A company now pays Oracle P because it's advertising cheaper prices and has good reputation.
6. Oracle P doesn't have information to give and is revealed as a fraud.
I see no way for this game to have an equilibrium of Oracle R's price going to $0. Oracle P can only make their move after Oracle R has gotten paid, and Oracle R gets to set the price at which it gets paid. If their are multiple companies getting the same information, it can simply set the price such that many of those companies must pay it. The only way that this game has an equilibrium of $0 for Oracle R s if you switch step 2 to after step 5.
>All of these companies are considered incredibly successful. They delivered high quality products and services to users at unbelievably low costs and tremendous convenience. These companies gave people what *they* really wanted. You seem to want to give them something else, like Google+, which they really do not want.
So firstly, a companies success isn't only dependent on how it pleases the users. The success of it's business model is dependent on many factors, like partnerships with companies in the ecosystem. Even if there aren't benefits to the users (which I'll argue there are in a second), there can be benefits to the ecosystem as a whole (which indirectly end up benefitting users).
From a partnership perspective, one huge advantage early on is that companies can credibly can commit to not locking down their data. This is going to be huge in the next few years as knowledge graph and facebook graph start bullying their partners in exchange for access to that data (Twitter has already done this). Note that there's no way to compete with these companies due to their network effect, unless you can credibly commit to not doing the same thing if the ecosystem switches to you.
>I don't really understand your Android Phone analogy. Many iPhone owners "jailbroke" their phones to install new apps,
Yes, but at huge risk to ruining their phone, and with an automatic void of warranty. What this shows is that users WANT this behavior, but Apple is doing everything in it's power to prevent it.
>and the Google Play store moderates for content (as do the individual developers who write apps).
There's a single checkbox in android to allow you to download non-android content, because the users want it. If there wasn't, someone would fork android and make a version that had it. Google would then lose its advantage in guiding the ecosystem, so it's in Google's interest to add this checkbox (in contract to Apple, which doesn't have this threat of a fork).
Likewise, the Google play store exists as a curation mechanism, but (this is the important part) because Android is open source, the curation choices it makes have to be beneficial to the users and ecosystem. If not, it's trivial for a Partner like LG to make their own store, and quickly get everyone to switch over because they're more fair.
Because iPhone is closed source, there's not this threat, and they frequently make choices that benefit them as a company at detriment to the users or ecosystem.
>Apps are constrained, by the operating system of the phone, and by the user's choices...one reason for this, is specifically to prevent the apps from interfering with the phone's core infrastructure or with other apps.
Agreed.
But in the closed source case, another reason is to protect the companies business interests by using monopoly and aggregation advantages to make decisions that benefit that company. Because of these advantages, it's far to costly for users or partners to switch to another platform, UNLESS there's a guarantee that this new platform won't end up doing the same thing once they have the same advantages. Right now, there's way to make that guarantee t in the case of data monopolies and network effects, unless you have a system like Ethereum. Again, this is hard to go through in a forum post, and I think the article I linked to above makes the case more thoroughly.
Can you walk me step by step of an example of how this works? In my mind it works like this
1. Oracle R(Real) and Oracle P(Parasite) advertise their services.
2. A company pays Oracle R to get it Data S.
3. Oracle R gets Data S
4. Oracle P steals Data S.
5. A company now pays Oracle P because it's advertising cheaper prices and has good reputation.
6. Oracle P doesn't have information to give and is revealed as a fraud.
I see no way for this game to have an equilibrium of Oracle R's price going to $0. Oracle P can only make their move after Oracle R has gotten paid, and Oracle R gets to set the price at which it gets paid. If their are multiple companies getting the same information, it can simply set the price such that many of those companies must pay it. The only way that this game has an equilibrium of $0 for Oracle R s if you switch step 2 to after step 5.
>All of these companies are considered incredibly successful. They delivered high quality products and services to users at unbelievably low costs and tremendous convenience. These companies gave people what *they* really wanted. You seem to want to give them something else, like Google+, which they really do not want.
So firstly, a companies success isn't only dependent on how it pleases the users. The success of it's business model is dependent on many factors, like partnerships with companies in the ecosystem. Even if there aren't benefits to the users (which I'll argue there are in a second), there can be benefits to the ecosystem as a whole (which indirectly end up benefitting users).
From a partnership perspective, one huge advantage early on is that companies can credibly can commit to not locking down their data. This is going to be huge in the next few years as knowledge graph and facebook graph start bullying their partners in exchange for access to that data (Twitter has already done this). Note that there's no way to compete with these companies due to their network effect, unless you can credibly commit to not doing the same thing if the ecosystem switches to you.
>I don't really understand your Android Phone analogy. Many iPhone owners "jailbroke" their phones to install new apps,
Yes, but at huge risk to ruining their phone, and with an automatic void of warranty. What this shows is that users WANT this behavior, but Apple is doing everything in it's power to prevent it.
>and the Google Play store moderates for content (as do the individual developers who write apps).
There's a single checkbox in android to allow you to download non-android content, because the users want it. If there wasn't, someone would fork android and make a version that had it. Google would then lose its advantage in guiding the ecosystem, so it's in Google's interest to add this checkbox (in contract to Apple, which doesn't have this threat of a fork).
Likewise, the Google play store exists as a curation mechanism, but (this is the important part) because Android is open source, the curation choices it makes have to be beneficial to the users and ecosystem. If not, it's trivial for a Partner like LG to make their own store, and quickly get everyone to switch over because they're more fair.
Because iPhone is closed source, there's not this threat, and they frequently make choices that benefit them as a company at detriment to the users or ecosystem.
>Apps are constrained, by the operating system of the phone, and by the user's choices...one reason for this, is specifically to prevent the apps from interfering with the phone's core infrastructure or with other apps.
Agreed.
But in the closed source case, another reason is to protect the companies business interests by using monopoly and aggregation advantages to make decisions that benefit that company. Because of these advantages, it's far to costly for users or partners to switch to another platform, UNLESS there's a guarantee that this new platform won't end up doing the same thing once they have the same advantages. Right now, there's way to make that guarantee t in the case of data monopolies and network effects, unless you have a system like Ethereum. Again, this is hard to go through in a forum post, and I think the article I linked to above makes the case more thoroughly.
#30
Design / Incentives / Game Theory / Re: Paying the oracle
Last post by zack - May 24, 2016, 10:03:01 PMQuote from: psztorc on May 24, 2016, 01:45:53 AM
> Even if there are zero trades and zero trading fees, the oracle still gets paid to judge on the outcome.
Not enough.
You can set the funding target of a dominant assurance contract arbitrarily high.