Sublime

A few months ago I was at a conference where Robin Hanson spoke about prediction markets.[1] He argued that given how much of companies' outcomes are driven by who they choose to hire, and how non-rigorous the process of selecting employees and revisiting those selections is, there's a literal trillion-dollar opportunity in getting it right. Predic... See more

Parfit and Cowen insisted that this leads to moral absurdities. “According to a social-discount rate of 5%, one statistical death next year counts for more than a billion deaths in 400 years,” they observed. They concluded by arguing that discount rates were not morally coherent. We should be equally concerned about the known consequences of our ac... See more