N
Nicholas Decker
nicholasdecker.substack.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2024
Economist Nicholas Decker writes Substack posts on economics research, covering housing, trade, development, prediction markets, and public policy.
What HN saysHN commenters cite his prediction-market post and argue over a provocative essay title, with one saying it makes no explicit death threats against the president.
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What HN people wrote when they linked it
YokoZar · 2026-02-27
You may be interested in "Do Morons Make Prediction Markets More Accurate?" - https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/do-morons-make-prediction-market…
Essentially the argument is that more dumb money in a prediction market provides an even stronger incentive for smart money to join, moving the price back to an accurate probability.
inverted_flag · 2025-04-25
Except neither the essay nor title make explicit death threats against the president.
https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/when-must-we-kill-them
gsf_emergency · 2024-12-27
Yes! Sneer and smarm is 100% a challenge to balance here on HN, seems like I barely got by!
Frankly i'd hoped someone would look at the other comments there, e.g. "Donald":
https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/the-superfluity-of-the-masses/co…
I don't agree with it all, but what he has going is a preference for first-order thinking: helping out the poor smart kids NOW, over lowering taxes so that entreprise will not be disincentivized (pardon the econspeak!)
[You might also be entertained by the historiography from "Anirudh"]
The thing NOT to learn from Sweden is how to award prizes. Certainly, the Fields Institute in Ontario (where Hinton built his career, btw) have their priorities at a more reasonable tilt vs Stockholm when it comes to building the future vs trying not to miss out on a piece of it.