Superstruct: Botboss

I am motivated by rewards, not punishment; by attainment of hopes, not avoidance of fears; by promise, not threat; by thriving, not surviving. So, it has been deeply difficult and emotional. After weeks of agonizing, I have finally contributed something to Superstruct. Here it is.

Botboss

The Botboss strategy combines Prediction Markets with near-mindless games like the Google Image Labeler. Prediction Markets give cunning, wealthy, powerful sociopaths a larger incentive to tell us the truth, than their incentive to trick us into voting and spending against our own interests. But actual work is needed. For that purpose, mindless games can be used to motivate apathetic, unqualified slackers to get off their butts and save the world, or at least stop destroying it, by entertaining them while they follow orders and measure outcomes.

Bad news, then good news.

The bad news is, no plan for saving the world can succeed without reworking the incentives of driven sociopaths and apathetic slackers. All Superthreats stem from their interactions of deceit and laziness, respectively.

The good news is that a world in which both of them are productive, through ignoble means such as gambling and goofing off, would be a much more attractive world to live in than a world of miserable self-sacrifice!


Part 1 of 3: Prediction Market

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Part 2 of 3: Doing the Actual Work and Measurement

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Part 3 of 3: Issues

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If any of you are curious about prediction markets, there are interesting specific real-life examples in this article on Overcoming Bias that illustrate how it works.

Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flow: Evidence from Google.

A 2008 Presidential Election Map based on predictions from InTrade, one of the prominent real-money prediction markets.