What will be the nature of the first large human space colony?
(Reposting question as this one is single option poll)
1,000
3.00@GaryGrenda Yeah it does count. The point is its kind of exclusive for rich people enjoyment. As long as its inaccessible to average income folks its ‘The Rich’.
@ftkurt adding the commie "the rich" option might make the options ambiguous/hard to resolve/arbitrary/no longer MECE. Not to mention it is, like, pretty cringe, but that's not the problem with regards of it being in a prediction market.
@BrunoParga I think its a valid usecase. Its not about being commie or petty. If the main purpose of this settlement would be wealthy people’s entertainment or exclusivity rather than anything that contributes to earth. Then it falls under this option. There are even movies around this idea. Elysium for instance.
@ftkurt in that case, writing "leisure" would have been like a trillion times better than "the rich". It is an actual purpose like the other entries, which makes resolution much easier. And it makes no cringe commie-like assumptions.
@BrunoParga well leisure is usually temporary. We are not looking into a disneyland for space but rather a permanent refuge. Hence focusing on people rather than the purpose makes more sense. I personally dont even understand why you think the word rich is cringe. It is what it is.
@ftkurt it's not the mere word "rich" that's cringe, it's using "the rich" as a particularly relevant category to look at the world. I find it is usually a symptom of a not very accurate or useful model of the world.
If you want to look at people rather than purpose you can say "miners" instead of "mining" and "researchers" instead of "research" and so on. Or you can be consistent and say that what you mean is "housing" or "residential".
@BrunoParga Well the problem with that would be the funtion of rich people. A researches does research, miner does mining. A wealthy person, thats hard to tell. I just wanted to keep concise. If you can propose a phrase that would both emphasize the permanent nature of it and also the privileged nature of it; i can rename the option. I would rather keep it to a short phrase though.
@ftkurt I am not sure what is going on here because the function of a residential facility cannot be more obvious. A research facility is for people to do research, a military facility is for people to conduct research, a residential facility is for people to live. I don't understand what is unclear to you about this.
Maybe your peeve is with people paying to be there rather than being paid or forced? Like I said, I think the very fact that you're privileging this framing kinda sets you apart in terms of one's logic and way of reasoning.
@BrunoParga well all of the options have to have residential facilies. Otherwise they wont be a colony but rather a gathering point for a certain task. The question is asking for a settlement. When it comes to options it focuses on if the settlement will have a function such as military, research etc. If it doesnt have a function its likely that its exclusively serving the housing function for some people. Space is very expensive and will keep staying very expensive compared to the ground based operations and settlements. An actual function would justify it and more importantly finance it through either funds or income. However if its only housing, someone has to be able to pay for it. Hence my first point, because space is so expensive people able to pay for it should be very wealthy as well. I know im throwing a lot of assumptions here; but this is my thought process when I am talking about “the rich” option.
Just want to say that I think "the rich" is fine. It clearly reveals the ideological preference of the author, but no more or less so than "commies" does.
@JoshuaWilkes so you don't think there's a difference between building something to serve as housing, and building something for another purpose and it having housing because it needs to? There's no difference between an apartment building in the middle of a city and the living quarters in, I don't know, a submarine or a mine in the middle of Siberia?
And yes, of course using "commies" shows my anti-gulag, anti-deliberate-starvation-of-political-enemies-and-ethnic-minorities ideology. I believe the other guys need to be opposed and made fun of, because they're unfortunately common and we can't be safe that we're never again getting the horrors they support. Showing how their ideas spoil this market is a small part of that.
@BrunoParga I think you are extrapolating a bit. First off, I am not a commie. And I have no sympathy whatsoever towards communists. I am having hard time understanding how using the phrase “the rich” makes me a commie automatically. There are rich and lower income neighborhoods in every city I have been to. Including in US. So we can never talk about that because if we do we become communists?
@BrunoParga I think that the intention of the creator is quite clear and I think that rather than seeking clarification and understanding about the market, you are just pursuing ideological debate.
I hope by pointing this out it will become easier to move on.
@JoshuaWilkes I've created the options I think are clearer. Whatever happens when the market is resolved, happens.
@ftkurt I think you shouldn't distort what I said.
I never said you were a commie - if you say you're not, whatever, you're not.
Commies - and other people, apparently - are fond of using "The Rich" as a conceptually productive characteristic, which is wrong - it doesn't carve reality at the joints for most purposes. Certainly not for the majority of cases it is used.
Certainly not for this market. Especially since I'm not even confident you have a clear idea for what that question resolving positively even looks like.
@BrunoParga Well tbh questions like this are more about measuring public opinion rather than closing it. This one will probably take longer than I would live. Regardless if I would be alive I would take statistics of the people of that community that crossed 1k line for the first time. If any group has more than 50%, i would resolve towards that.
@ftkurt like, you're unclear on what exactly you'd take statistics about. Is it the residents' net worth?
I've been thinking from the beginning that test wasn't really well thought through. (In no small measure because using "The Rich" as a significant category for analysis impoverishes one's thinking.) I made several suggestions for improvement, you ignored them.
I expect, with quite good probability, that resolution of this market will be unclear or unsatisfactory to traders because of the conceptual inadequacy.
@BrunoParga If you really need a measure I would set the limit at 99th percentile. If they are earning more than 99% of the people then they are rich.
@ftkurt that is clearer. So, to recap, if at least half of all people in that settlement are in the top 1% of all humans in the universe, either by net worth or income, then this market resolves to "The Rich" regardless of any other activities that take place in the settlement?
@BrunoParga Close but not exactly; if they are, for instance, researchers doing reserach there; i would count those individuals towards research option. I dont think there will be a huge overlap. But still i wanted to clarify that.
@ftkurt okay, sounds good.
This is why I said from the very start that it is a dumb option to have.
First of all, if this is to be resolved, you need to decide whether you're using the 2024 or the then-current income/wealth distributions, and either way you'll be absurd. 1000 years ago literally nobody had an income of $130k in 2024 dollars, and whenever the question resolves the share of people who do will be much higher than it is today.
But even setting that aside, you really didn't think this through. A kinda crappy semi luxury resort with 1 staff for every 2 guests (assuming all guests fit your income threshold and none of the staff do) counts as fitting in "The Rich" kind of settlement, but a really luxurious one with 3 staff per guess doesn't. That's how ridiculously absurd your criterion is: becoming more luxurious moves the resolution from yes to no.
And you know why that is? Because the category is bad. Because it leads you to forget that rich people hire others to prepare and serve their food, mix their drinks, take care of their laundry, drive/pilot them around, handle the logistics of the stuff they buy, build and maintain their houses (especially significant in numerical terms in your fantasy of a luxury space condo), give them massages and manis and pedis and stuff like that, and entertain them in a myriad of ways.