Shall We Vote on Values, But Bet on Beliefs? (Hanson 2003)

Summary

Robin Hanson proposes a governance framework distinguishing value decisions (made democratically) from empirical belief questions (resolved via prediction markets). The paper argues that futarchy—using decision markets to select policies based on forecasted welfare outcomes—could improve collective decision-making by better aggregating dispersed information.

Key Points

• •Proposes 'futarchy': vote on values/goals, then use prediction markets to identify policies most likely to achieve those goals.
• •Argues prediction markets outperform expert committees and voting for aggregating distributed knowledge about causal facts.
• •Separates normative questions (what we want) from empirical questions (what achieves it), assigning each to appropriate institutions.
• •Addresses incentive problems in current governance where decision-makers lack skin-in-the-game on empirical predictions.
• •Relevant to AI governance: could inform how societies choose AI development policies based on forecasted safety/welfare outcomes.