The armchair diagnosis doesn't add anything to the behavior offered in support of it. If someone has a history of deceptive behavior, extreme emotional instability, seemingly delusional behavior, whatever, then that is the potential reason to disengage. What's the marginal benefit here to justify the various harms of armchair diagnosis?

As an aside, Torres uses they/them pronouns. Could you correct your comments?

I don't think armchair diagnosis of the alleged psychiatric disorders of EA critics (or much of anyone, for that matter) is an appropriate activity for the Forum.

At this point, I'd be willing to buy out credit from anyone who obtains credit on Manifund, applies said credit to this project, and the project doesn't fund. Hopefully Manifund will find a more elegant solution for this kind of issue (there was a discussion on Discord last week) but this should work as a stopgap.

(Offer limited to $240, which is the current funding gap between current offers and the $2500 minimum.)

[with respect to talent] In terms of age prioritization, it is suboptimal that EA focuses more on outreach to university students or young professionals as opposed to mid-career people with greater expertise and experience.

I think this is conditional on the object-level positions available being reasonably well-suited to mid-career folks. For instance, job security becomes increasingly important as one ages. Even to the extent that successful mid-career folks face a risk of being let go in their current positions, they know they should be able to find another position in their field pretty easily. Likewise, positions in some cause areas may not pay well enough to attract much interest from successful mid-career professionals in certain geographic locations who have a kid and a mortgage. Those areas are probably better off with the current recruiting focus, at least in developed countries.

Yes, although this was much more OK with play money than it would be with quasi-cash. Especially since Manifold's heavy use of the play-money printing press wasn't a secret.

The crux for me is whether "published reply in journal" could and would be (mis?)construed by some people as a sort of quality signal.

To the extent that journals are allowing replies-by-permission by third parties, then we don't want to diminish the value of getting one of those published. As Richard notes, the incentives are already weak. Yet I think replies-by-permission are undervalued already, because I think ~ direct dialog is usually better than ~ talking past one another.

If I were too concerned about this issue for a reply author with standing, I'd probably at least offer to publish an Editor's Note with a link to the reply author's off-journal response.

I tend to agree with your co-founders on this one.

Manifold users don't actually cash out that much, so we shouldn't actually need that much cash on hand. 

I am not sure that the behavior of past Manifold users in a play-money economy where the only cash-out was to charity is a reliable guide to how future users will react to in a ~real-money environment.

Another point Zvi raised is that very few online sportsbooks maintain enough cash on hand to fully pay out all users -- it just doesn't make business sense to do this, you grow more slowly if you commit to holding extra cash.

When we're talking about play money potentially redeemable for charitable donations, that is one thing, especially where the vast majority was ~freely obtained (as opposed to being purchased with cash. If people can't donate play money they were largely given for free, that doesn't keep me up at night too much. It's something different where the quasi-cash was largely purchased with real cash (or obtained in wagers of quasi-cash that was largely purchased with real cash). In the latter case, I think you have to be prepared for the risk of a bank run.

The equity value of Manifold dominates the cash considerations (we last raised at $40m valuation), so from our business perspective we can eventually back assets just by raising more. 

Maybe, but conditioned on there being a run on the bank, Manifold equity would not provide a solid backstop for customer claims. If you are in a bankrun situation, there is a pretty decent possibility that Manifold equity is either illiquid or ~worthless. You might be hard-pressed to find buyers either because of the underlying facts that led to the bankrun or due to skepticism about the value of a business whose customers are in a panicked rush for the door. 

Moreover, the base rate of young startup failure is pretty high, so there could be a number of scenarios in which a run makes sense. If I thought Manifold might be going under soon, and my quasi-cash was backed only to a limited extent, I think I'd rather exchange my quasi-cash for real cash ASAP. 

Perhaps you could get an irrevocable line of credit for the next ~2 years backed by a certain amount of equity? If you can, then that could back the quasi-cash liabilities. If you can't, is evidence that you can't get a sophisticated lender to accept the equity as collateral also evidence that Manifold users shouldn't accept it as backing? 

I guess another way of saying this is that I think Manifold should treat quasi-cash holders as ~depositors, and thus should be unwilling to expose them to more than a tiny risk of loss due to anything other than bad trades on Manifold.

A serious right would mean journals would send you an email with the critical paper, the code and the underlying data, and give you time to create your response (subject to some word limit, copy-editing etc.) for them to publish. 

I generally agree with this to the extent that the person authoring the reply had a strong basis for standing -- e.g., the published piece represented a direct and sustained criticism on their previously published piece. I would not extend it to cases where the person authoring the reply was more of a third party, as in the story Richard shares here. I am unsure about extending it to cases where the challenged work was not published in an appropriate journal in the first place. It seems a bit odd to guarantee someone journal access to defend work where there is no clear reason to believe the original work was of journal-level quality in the first place. 

Agree that real money cash outs would largely supersede this, but that's conditional on them actually happening and sticking around. It doesn't sound to me like real money is likely to roll out next month, though.