Betting and Truth

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 5:07 PM -0800 12/29/96, Sandy Sandfort wrote:

>On Sun, 29 Dec 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
>
>> Unlike Sandy, I'm not a great believer in multi-year bets as an
>> epistemological tool....
>
>Tim has misstated my belief.  I do think that short- or long-term
>bets fulfill a purpose, but it is not an epistemological one.
>(Tim, are you thinking of Robin or Nick?)  The purpose it serves
>is to make pontificators more cautious in the pontifications.
>It's easy to gas on about subjects in which you have no economic
>stake; we all do that at times.  The possiblity of financial loss
>or reward, however, encourages temperance.

Robin and Nick have even more faith in bets as a tool, but Sandy has, at
least on our list, been more of a user of such bets.

My problem has always been that they rarely work...in fact, of the last N
such bets which were offered (e.g., by Sandy) I can't recall a single one
which was ever even accepted, let alone which was settled. (And I recall
"bets" offered to Phill Hallam-Baker, Dimitri Vulis, etc.)

So, the thesis that pontifications are lessened is wiped out by the fact
that no such bets have ever, in my memory, been accepted. If anything,
those challenged to "put their money where their mouth is" almost uniformly
write _more_, not less.

While I accept the basic prinicple (and my income depends to a large extent
on my investments, which is surely an example of putting my money where my
mouth is, to a large extent), I question the usefullness in forums like
ours. For obvious reasons.

--Tim May


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