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Comment by sshine | Hacker News Reader

Behavioural economists as well as poker players know that people make very different decisions when the money is real. The psychology is different.

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While generally true, for what is worth the recently popular play money prediction site Manifold Markets, as well as the general predictions site Metaculus both seem to do well and reflect what you see elsewhere quick.

Kant knew this, too:

> The usual touchstone, whether that which someone asserts is merely his persuasion — or at least his subjective conviction, that is, his firm belief — is betting. It often happens that someone propounds his views with such positive and uncompromising assurance that he seems to have entirely set aside all thought of possible error. A bet disconcerts him. Sometimes it turns out that he has a conviction which can be estimated at a value of one ducat, but not of ten. For he is very willing to venture one ducat, but when it is a question of ten he becomes aware, as he had not previously been, that it may very well be that he is in error. If, in a given case, we represent ourselves as staking the happiness of our whole life, the triumphant tone of our judgment is greatly abated; we become extremely diffident, and discover for the first time that our belief does not reach so far. Thus pragmatic belief always exists in some specific degree, which, according to differences in the interests at stake, may be large or may be small.

There is a limit to this reasoning, though. As the wagered amount starts to become a significant fraction of your wealth, you should not make the bet even on very certain matters. Because that's the way you go broke in the long run, even on very sure bets. (Expose yourself to a 1 % loss often enough and eventually you will suffer it.)

In other words, we might be "diffident" at the prospect of "staking the happiness of our whole life" but that does not mean that "our belief does not reach so far." It just means we are rationally evaluating the risk of ruin in the long run.

Geez, people in the olden days took a long time to say simple things like "put your money where your mouth is"

If you "charge" people by requiring them to spend time doing something in order to reset their supply, then that's sufficient to give the money some value.

OP should've called it Kudocoin and started with the price of, let's say, $2 for 50000 Kudocoins, [s]he'd be rich!

Oh wait, it's 2022 and crypto has imploded...

Edit: corrected gender, I don't know why your reply got downvoted to death, sorry OP.

Building the site was more of an intellectual exercise to see how easy or difficult building using a low priced smartphone would be.

P.S. OP's a "she"

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