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Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

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Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#211

Post by conanbatt »

adammoelis wrote: post #151
nsl73 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m highly skeptical of jackpot generation, as there has been multiple high profile examples of corruption in this process. Yotta would have to insure me this is fair before I consider saving with them, but to be fair I’m probably not their target market as high earner that already has established savings practices.

Thanks for this feedback. What could we do that would give you comfort in the number drawing process? We definitely want to address this concern, so your feedback here would be great.

You can do provably fair gambling by using cryptography to show the generation was not tampered with. It was common in bitcoin gambling sites that had no other way to prove they were (somewhat) legit.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#212

Post by SilasHaslam »

zomglings wrote: post #179
clairity wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

incidentally, you’re describing a key limitation of economic systems, whereby value as represented by price doesn’t reflect holistic utility to infinitely-complex humans and human societies. it’s true of basically everything, including stocks (efficient markets and all that), and forms the basis of a material critique of laissez faire capitalism.

This is interesting. The way I understood the work of von Neumann and Morgenstern on game theory, there is an extensive discussion of utility and the derived ordering on preferences. I interpret recent work on behavioral economics as building on their work to call into question the claim that one can easily estimate such a utility function for an economic agent in a manner invariant to the internal state of that agen…

Relevant Freakonomics podcast with Maria Konnikova on her new book about luck, game theory, etc. They discuss von Neumann, and how he was actually a bad poker player, bud enjoyed the social aspect.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/konnikova-biggest-bluff/

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#213

Post by zomglings »

tr352 wrote: post #190
zomglings wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. The way I understood the work of von Neumann and Morgenstern on game theory, there is an extensive discussion of utility and the derived ordering on preferences. I interpret recent work on behavioral economics as building on their work to call into question the claim that one can easily estimate such a utility function for an economic agent in a manner invariant to the internal state of that agen…

This is interesting :-) Is there any reasonably accessible literature on this topic, in particular the latter idea of not being able to estimate an agent’s utility function?

I'm not particularly well read in economics, and have not read anything that specifically addresses the difficulty of estimating utility. My view is rather derived from my readings on economics and related fields. The material that stands out the most in my mind are:

1. Von Neumann and Morgenstern's book (particular the sections where they develop the notion of utility) is pretty readable - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483055.Theory_of_Games_a...

2. The Economic Naturalist (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/629238.The_Economic_Natu...). It is a great compilation of economic edge cases which show that the notion of utility is not so easy to capture using the standard "narrowly self-interested economic agents" world view. It requires a lot of subjective interpretation.

3. The Honest Truth about Dishonesty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honest_Truth_about_Dishone...). Shows how contextually dependent utility (if it is at all quantifiable) can be.

4. The body of work around the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...). In particular we can see how the dynamics of simulations using rational agents diverge from the dynamics of experiments involving actual humans. This suggests that the utility assumptions used in economic analyses do not reflect whatever notion of utility that could actually apply to human behavior.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#214

Post by adammoelis »

schoen wrote: post #187
adammoelis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - I haven't come across Capitalization Titles. I will definitely look into these now. Thanks for sharing

I didn't know about this before but since I speak Portuguese I was easily able to find https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%ADtulo_de_capitaliza%C3%A... That Wikipedia article is very skeptical toward this instrument. Notably, it looks like the typical implementation is like a Certificate of Deposit in the U.S., where the depositor's money is locked up for a fairly long period of time. At least one author of the Wikipe…

This is interesting. Similar to us in some ways, but we don't lock up your cash. You can withdraw any time. And no fees. I'll read more about this capitalization bond concept though, since I hadn't seen it before.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#215

Post by adammoelis »

Douger wrote: post #201

Nice! This exists in New Zealand as Bonus Bonds as well. They're quite often given as savings gifts. All the best!

Yes we did come across Bonus Bonds as well! They are almost as big in New Zealand I think as they are in the UK, with around 33% of the population participating. Also run by the gov.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#216

Post by adammoelis »

Jommi wrote: post #141
adammoelis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be a U.S resident in order to win prizes right now unfortunately, so basically yes

How do you check eligibility?

We don't verify for the smaller prizes. For bigger prizes, we verify after the fact and confirm with the winner.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#218

Post by too_pricey »

How are ya'll planning to adjust to changes in interest rates? Will prizes become lower, rarer, will the base/worst case interest rate change first, etc?

For this to have the societal impact ya'll seem to want, it's going to need high usage from people who probably have little experience with the changes in the Fed rate and its impact on savings accounts. You obviously need to adjust to this yourself, but I can see changes in lottery odds (or changes in prize value) as being aggravating to users.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#219

Post by adammoelis »

too_pricey wrote: post #218

How are ya'll planning to adjust to changes in interest rates? Will prizes become lower, rarer, will the base/worst case interest rate change first, etc? For this to have the societal impact ya'll seem to want, it's going to need high usage from people who probably have little experience with the changes in the Fed rate and its impact on savings accounts. You obviously need to adjust to this yourself, but I can see c…

We want the bulk of our all-in value to come from prizes, since that's really our differentiator. Should rates go down, we would likely lower the base rate first. Should rates go up, prizes would be the first to go up.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#220

Post by ctchocula »

adammoelis wrote: post #14
felixledem wrote: post #9

Really interesting concept! Are you planning on adding index fund investing in the future? It seems like you could incentivize investors to take a long term view with a similar, gamified approach.

We haven't thought about this yet but that's interesting. What kind of index fund gamification do you have in mind?

Perhaps instead of paying out the dividend payment as usual, you can make the user receive tickets based on how many index fund shares they own, and you can fund a lottery using the dividend payments. The user can sell their index fund at anytime, so it would be the same as keeping their money in the savings account except they have better odds of beating inflation than a savings account.

If you limit the savings options to tried and trusted savings vehicles - savings account, total bond market, total US market and total international - perhaps you can instill investment knowledge in the users on top of the good savings practices.

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