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I did something similar last year with https://www.gwern.net/Long-Bets https://www.gwern.net/Long-Bets . The even-odds restriction is a major one, and I think s

by gwern 7y ago

I did something similar last year with https://www.gwern.net/Long-Bets https://www.gwern.net/Long-Bets . The even-odds restriction is a major one, and I think sabotages all of LB's goals. Why do prediction markets like PredictIt do more in a week or so than LB has done in almost two decades? It's hard to say that LB has been more of a success in getting people to put their money where their mouth is or bringing more rigor to public discourse (compare how often PredictIt or other betting markets are cited in political analysis to how often LB is cited... ever).

jessriedel 7y ago
I agree with your complaints and indeed years ago I independently wrote an email to LB complaining about the fact that predictions could remain on the site even after challenges had been rejected. However, directly comparing LB to PredictIt seems unfair. LB is just not a big priority for the Long Now Foundation, and I expect it took vastly less investment to launch or for continued operating expenses. It's not surprising it accomplished less. Edit (in response to your edit, I think): Sure, public exposure has not been commensurate with contribution. Not shocking, but frustrating.
- gwern 7y ago
  > LB is just not a big priority for the Long Now Foundation, and I expect it took vastly less investment to launch or for continued operating expenses. It's not surprising it accomplished less. Sure, it's not a priority - now. Because it failed. But it had quite a splashy launch and they had high hopes and really pulled in their board of luminaries for the initial batch of predictions. It launched so long ago it could have dominated any emerging online prediction markets. It had the opportunity, a useful goal, a nonprofit backing, tremendous goodwill, and celebrity. But instead, even something like Augur, a weirdo cryptocurrency project which formally launched hardly a year ago, will turn over more in a month or two than LB over 2 decades.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    Thanks, that's useful background
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > But instead, even something like Augur, a weirdo cryptocurrency project which formally launched hardly a year ago, will turn over more in a month or two than LB over 2 decades. Maybe I'm just missing something, but Augur seems pretty dead to me? I only see three bets currently open (one about the UK general election, two about NFL games). That being said, the Long Bets project was always about high-profile individual bets, not the larger markets that Augur seemed to be trying for.
    - gwern 7y ago
      What are you looking at, https://predictions.global/ https://predictions.global/ ? An estimate of $2.6m at stake sounds pretty good to me, compared to LB which has like $40k at stake right now. It's also worth noting that as part of the migration to Augur 2, Augur 1 is supposed to be gradually shutting down: https://www.augur.net/blog/v2-transition-update/ https://www.augur.net/blog/v2-transition-update/ https://www.augur.net/blog/v1-cutoff-update/ https://www.augur.net/blog/v1-cutoff-update/ So that may be reducing activity.
      - duskwuff 7y ago
        I was looking at the site that's linked from the augur.net home page, which now only lists two markets: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaM5kLjo21i2eCSiaDQh4S1dG4vUdFkgKYQjQUiD66wHg/?ethereum_node_http=https%3a%2f%2feth-mainnet.alchemyapi.io%2fjsonrpc%2f7sE1TzCIRIQA3NJPD5wg7YRiVjhxuWAE&augur_node=wss%3a%2f%2fpredictions.market:9002#!/markets https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaM5kLjo21i2eCSiaDQh4S1dG4... I don't know enough about Augur to understand what the difference between the two sites is. What does seem strange to me, though, is that predictions.global claims that $2.6M is at stake, but the top 10 markets sorted by "money at stake" only sum up to roughly $288k at stake. (The last one in the list is under $1k, too, so I have a hard time believing that the remaining $2.3M is all in the long tail.)
dmurray 7y ago
It should be possible to turn an odds bet into an even-money bet with some financial engineering. Like "I predict that either we will have talking horses, or the last two digits in the Dow will be between 0 and 45." Probably there's a way to do it with cryptography too. This only solves one of the issues you identify. But I've always seen LB as a publicity gimmick rather than a serious marketplace.
- gwern 7y ago
  I'm not quite following what you mean. Sure, you can change the probability and make one side arbitrarily likely to win by appropriate wording. (Heck, just take one of the existing predictions which has ~0% probability - there's plenty of them.) That doesn't change the problem that you can only win at most twice the money you put up despite locking it up arbitrarily long.

by gwern 7y ago

jessriedel 7y ago

I agree with your complaints and indeed years ago I independently wrote an email to LB complaining about the fact that predictions could remain on the site even after challenges had been rejected. However, directly comparing LB to PredictIt seems unfair. LB is just not a big priority for the Long Now Foundation, and I expect it took vastly less investment to launch or for continued operating expenses. It's not surprising it accomplished less. Edit (in response to your edit, I think): Sure, public exposure has not been commensurate with contribution. Not shocking, but frustrating.

gwern 7y ago
> LB is just not a big priority for the Long Now Foundation, and I expect it took vastly less investment to launch or for continued operating expenses. It's not surprising it accomplished less. Sure, it's not a priority - now. Because it failed. But it had quite a splashy launch and they had high hopes and really pulled in their board of luminaries for the initial batch of predictions. It launched so long ago it could have dominated any emerging online prediction markets. It had the opportunity, a useful goal, a nonprofit backing, tremendous goodwill, and celebrity. But instead, even something like Augur, a weirdo cryptocurrency project which formally launched hardly a year ago, will turn over more in a month or two than LB over 2 decades.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  Thanks, that's useful background
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > But instead, even something like Augur, a weirdo cryptocurrency project which formally launched hardly a year ago, will turn over more in a month or two than LB over 2 decades. Maybe I'm just missing something, but Augur seems pretty dead to me? I only see three bets currently open (one about the UK general election, two about NFL games). That being said, the Long Bets project was always about high-profile individual bets, not the larger markets that Augur seemed to be trying for.
  - gwern 7y ago
    What are you looking at, https://predictions.global/ https://predictions.global/ ? An estimate of $2.6m at stake sounds pretty good to me, compared to LB which has like $40k at stake right now. It's also worth noting that as part of the migration to Augur 2, Augur 1 is supposed to be gradually shutting down: https://www.augur.net/blog/v2-transition-update/ https://www.augur.net/blog/v2-transition-update/ https://www.augur.net/blog/v1-cutoff-update/ https://www.augur.net/blog/v1-cutoff-update/ So that may be reducing activity.
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      I was looking at the site that's linked from the augur.net home page, which now only lists two markets: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaM5kLjo21i2eCSiaDQh4S1dG4vUdFkgKYQjQUiD66wHg/?ethereum_node_http=https%3a%2f%2feth-mainnet.alchemyapi.io%2fjsonrpc%2f7sE1TzCIRIQA3NJPD5wg7YRiVjhxuWAE&augur_node=wss%3a%2f%2fpredictions.market:9002#!/markets https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaM5kLjo21i2eCSiaDQh4S1dG4... I don't know enough about Augur to understand what the difference between the two sites is. What does seem strange to me, though, is that predictions.global claims that $2.6M is at stake, but the top 10 markets sorted by "money at stake" only sum up to roughly $288k at stake. (The last one in the list is under $1k, too, so I have a hard time believing that the remaining $2.3M is all in the long tail.)

dmurray 7y ago

It should be possible to turn an odds bet into an even-money bet with some financial engineering. Like "I predict that either we will have talking horses, or the last two digits in the Dow will be between 0 and 45." Probably there's a way to do it with cryptography too. This only solves one of the issues you identify. But I've always seen LB as a publicity gimmick rather than a serious marketplace.

gwern 7y ago
I'm not quite following what you mean. Sure, you can change the probability and make one side arbitrarily likely to win by appropriate wording. (Heck, just take one of the existing predictions which has ~0% probability - there's plenty of them.) That doesn't change the problem that you can only win at most twice the money you put up despite locking it up arbitrarily long.