My Best Idea: Decision Markets
On April 25 1996 the author posted the first description of “decision markets,” a hybrid of prediction markets and decision theory that prices outcomes conditional on specific choices. The idea builds on two long‑standing concepts: markets’ ability to aggregate dispersed information and the economic value of information for decision making. While regulators historically limited markets to risk‑hedging, the author argues that decision‑conditional contracts could turn governance into a data‑driven process. Recent pilot projects suggest the concept is moving from theory toward practice.
Why Focus On Mid-Level Goals?
Human behavior is organized in hierarchical goal trees, where low‑level actions are cheap and easy to automate, and high‑level aspirations are abstract and hard to monitor. Mid‑level goals sit at a sweet spot: they are concrete enough to be observable...
When AI Day of Reckoning?
Investors have poured roughly $500 billion annually into AI, hoping it will halve software development costs and trigger a surge in the $1‑2 trillion global software market. While large‑language models have shown promise in code generation, the broader software value chain includes...
Buying News By Metric
The author proposes redesigning news economics by tying payments to measurable outcomes such as readership volume, enjoyment ratings, predictive value for future trends, and factual accuracy. Each metric would generate a financial incentive for providers to produce content that aligns...