Thursday, March 22, 2007

Truth, in majorities and arbitrage



Over at OvercomingBias, Hal Finney was reflecting on how Truth is distributed across the whole of human grasp. The nice picture he provided is here, where T=Truth. One powerful conclusion from his reflections is that the majority of people can improve their proximity to Truth by reverting to the majoritarian thought.

While I found this totally interesting, I think it has its limits. For one thing, this only applies to continuous truth, i.e. it stops where Einstein stopped and does not address what Schrodinger was saying. So I cannot find its relevance on the contracts we trade on Intrade, which expire at 0 or 100, never somewhere in between.

Some of you readers know that, unlike most of the economists to whom I link, I do have a spiritual faith beyond the empirical. And the Reason why that is so, is I am under the belief that not everything can be measured, and what cannot be measured requires a measure of Faith.

Here's hoping that you and I figure out how to expire ourselves at 100.

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