Open Thread 327
This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. Also:
1: More meetups this week, in Istanbul, Edinburgh, Manchester, Phoenix, Fort Meade, Brooklyn, Hanoi, and New Orleans. And Sao Paulo has been added to the list. More information, including times and dates, here.
2: Reminder that the due date for this year’s Book Review Contest is May 5, ie next Sunday. You can find where to submit at the link.
3: I’ve said good things about the Prospera charter city and their libertarian approach to medical regulation. Supporting a libertarian approach to medical regulation doesn’t mean everything will work and there won’t be any scams, it just posits that the benefits will be worth these downsides. Still, I feel an obligation to let people know when one of them probably doesn’t work, so here’s a convincing-seeming takedown of the Prospera-based Minicircle clinic (see also SarahC’s writeup).
4: Manifold Markets wants to pivot from play-money prediction markets to real-ish money via a loophole that allows certain kinds of gambling-like activity. In the process, they’re devaluing mana (as available for charitable donations) by a factor of ten as of May 1. If you want to donate your mana to charity, do it before then. See here for (slightly) more info.
5: Philosophy Bear was interested in some responses to the ACX survey and doing a follow-up survey to explore them further. He’s offering a $50 - $150 prize for a lucky survey respondent. Go here to take his follow-up survey. I’m deliberately not starting with a link his blog because it might give away the point of the survey, but after you’ve taken it, you can read it here.
6: Robin Hanson wrote a response to my piece arguing against his healthcare views. I’ll probably have a response up sometime in the next week or two if I don’t get distracted.