Tyler on the meta-lesson of our unemployment bet:

denouement of the bet about the relative status of the people in question, and it produces a celebratory mindset in the victor.  That lowers the quality of dialogue and also introspection, just as political campaigns lower the quality of various ideas — too much emphasis on the candidates and the competition.  Bryan, in his post, reaffirms his core intuition that labor markets usually return to normal pretty quickly, at least in the United States.  But if you scrutinize the above diagram, as well as the lackluster wage data, that is exactly the premise he should be questioning.

Let’s analyze this point-by-point.

I think this episode is a good example of what is wrong with betting on ideas.

I think this episode is a good example of what is right with betting on ideas.

Betting tends to lock people into positions,

Tyler’s not wrong.  Betting “locks people into positions” in the laudable sense that it makes them clearly state what their positions are.  Once positions have been spelled out, though, betting spurs the opposite of dogmatism.  The clarity of the resolution fortifies right people and disconcerts wrong people.  That’s progress toward truth.

…gets them rooting for one outcome over another,

Indeed.  But unless either party has the power to change the outcome for the worse, what difference does it make what they’re rooting for?

…it makes the denouement of the bet about the relative status of the people in question,

Partly, but this is all for the good.  The loser had a theory with a prediction he was willing to bet on.  He was wrong.  This isn’t conclusive proof his theory was wrong or his judgment is poor, but it is an ironclad reason to reduce confidence in the theory and the judgment of the person who held it.

…and it produces a celebratory mindset in the victor.

I fail to see why this is a problem.  The possession of demonstrable insight is worth celebrating. But if victory laps are bad, they are a far lesser evil than what pervades the betless badlands: the eternal celebratory mindset of pundits who refuse to specify in advance what counts as victory.

That lowers the quality of dialogue and also introspection, just as political campaigns lower the quality of various ideas — too much emphasis on the candidates and the competition.

There’s a world of difference between elections and bets.  Elections are popularity contests.  Bets are cognitive contests.  The electoral mistake is to conflate the two: To think ideas are right because they’re popular.  I’ve never known a victorious bettor to make the parallel mistake – to think that because they’ve won a bet, the political system will heed their wisdom.  I personally expect nothing of the sort.

Bryan, in his post, reaffirms his core intuition that labor markets usually return to normal pretty quickly, at least in the United States. But if you scrutinize the above diagram, as well as the lackluster wage data, that is exactly the premise he should be questioning.

I’m happy to admit there are broader questions here, though Noah Smith, not Tyler, has the right of it.  But when a bet lets us make progress on narrower questions, we shouldn’t rush to change the subject.  Instead, we should pause, reflect, and be grateful that we genuinely learned something.  Betting rules.