8 ms·

>The underlying assumption of such markets is that no player has more than one vote in the actual election, out of some 150 million or so votes, so each individ

by Imnimo 6y ago

>The underlying assumption of such markets is that no player has more than one vote in the actual election, out of some 150 million or so votes, so each individual player's ability to affect the outcome is negligible. But this is not necessarily true. In the extreme case, a bettor could be one of nine Supreme Court justices. Or a participant in some sort of fantasy vote-rigging conspiracy. Or even a political insider tanking their candidate's own chances and betting against themselves. There's a pretty wide range of people who could plausibly (or not-so-plausibly in the conspiracy example) have more than a one-vote influence over the result of the election.

tshaddox 6y ago
Sure, that’s why there are rules about when and how a CEO can sell their company’s stock (they generally have to announce the sale in advance). I’m not sure about the laws around Supreme Court justices, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least well-accepted that no judge should work a case when they have a personal interest in the outcome. I hope that would be grounds for removing a justice.
jtxxwl2 6y ago
>Or a participant in some sort of fantasy vote-rigging conspiracy. This is even more relevant outside of the US. In the US vote rigging conspiracies are impossible for some inexplicable reason, perhaps related to magical soil, but outside of the US they are a real concern.
- mvc 6y ago
  May I be so bold as to suggest that not all vote rigging conspiracies are considered impossible. Just the ones that have been rejected by every court that has tested them.
  - jtxxwl2 6y ago
    One theory I've heard is that the magical soil in the US would compel the riggers to confess and/or provide evidence of their guilt to the courts and to the general public, rather than lying and/or concealing that evidence. In the rest of the world, courts often are not provided with relevant evidence or confessions, and therefore rigging remains possible.
    - j4yav 6y ago
      Doesn't this path lead to believing anything you like, once you free yourself from the chains of needing evidence? I feel like I'd lose all track of what is real if I used this logic.
      - jtxxwl2 6y ago
        My understanding is that people in those other countries have not been lead down such a path, even though they know that sometimes people get away with stealing elections in their countries. I believe they use reason and inference when judging what is real, because all relevant hard evidence is not always available to them.
        jeremysalwen 6y ago
        > My understanding is that people in those other countries have not been lead down such a path Ah, that makes sense. They would require evidence to believe something. So for example, in an election where there was no evidence of fraud, they would not believe there was fraud. Such as the one which occurred in 2020 in the U.S.
        jtxxwl2 6y ago
        Yes, and examples of evidence might include that some election facilities were administered by people with a seething hatred for one of the candidates, and election observers in some areas were prevented from being able to meaningfully monitor the election process. Of course there are many other potential forms of evidence, but those two right there would be enough to give anyone pretty good reason to believe there was election fraud, provided it happened outside of America, since election fraud can't take place in America.
        eprparadox 6y ago
        I assume you're talking about Republican administered election facilities and since they have a well documented seething hatred toward Biden you're suggesting that Biden actually won by a _much greater margin_ except for the fraud that no doubt occurred in Trump's favor.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > In the US vote rigging conspiracies are impossible No, they aren't, which is why our most recent ex-President (who also was notorious for inventing fantastical vote-rigging conspiracies out of no evidence in the same election) is currently at the center of a criminal investigation for one based on fairly hard evidence, and his political party is trying to change the Georgia State Constitution to derail the investigation. There's a difference between “That vote-rigging conspiracy is an unsubstantiated fantasy” and “Vote-rigging conspiracies are impossible.” Pretty much no one in the US has ever argued the latter.
  - jtxxwl2 6y ago
    >No, they aren't Have I been mislead? If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and investigations and evidence in other countries as well, and that has seemingly not prevented election rigging there.
    - rspeele 6y ago
      It's kinda like how Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster could be real, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that they are almost certainly not real. Some motivated people have spent a lot of time and money trying to find proof of those creatures, and come up with nothing but some blurry pictures (including some known to be intentional fakes) and conjecture. So there's not much reason to take them seriously.
      - jtxxwl2 6y ago
        It's also kinda like how Al Capone might not have ordered the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he probably did, even though no one could definitively prove it. And also kinda like how Kim Jong Un might be the preferred candidate of 100% of North Koreans, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he is almost certainly not.
gbronner 6y ago
This is the explicit aim of prediction markets: to incentivize people with real knowledge to place bets, implicitly leaking information

by Imnimo 6y ago

tshaddox 6y ago

Sure, that’s why there are rules about when and how a CEO can sell their company’s stock (they generally have to announce the sale in advance). I’m not sure about the laws around Supreme Court justices, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least well-accepted that no judge should work a case when they have a personal interest in the outcome. I hope that would be grounds for removing a justice.

jtxxwl2 6y ago

>Or a participant in some sort of fantasy vote-rigging conspiracy. This is even more relevant outside of the US. In the US vote rigging conspiracies are impossible for some inexplicable reason, perhaps related to magical soil, but outside of the US they are a real concern.

mvc 6y ago
May I be so bold as to suggest that not all vote rigging conspiracies are considered impossible. Just the ones that have been rejected by every court that has tested them.
- jtxxwl2 6y ago
  One theory I've heard is that the magical soil in the US would compel the riggers to confess and/or provide evidence of their guilt to the courts and to the general public, rather than lying and/or concealing that evidence. In the rest of the world, courts often are not provided with relevant evidence or confessions, and therefore rigging remains possible.
  - j4yav 6y ago
    Doesn't this path lead to believing anything you like, once you free yourself from the chains of needing evidence? I feel like I'd lose all track of what is real if I used this logic.
    - jtxxwl2 6y ago
      My understanding is that people in those other countries have not been lead down such a path, even though they know that sometimes people get away with stealing elections in their countries. I believe they use reason and inference when judging what is real, because all relevant hard evidence is not always available to them.
      - jeremysalwen 6y ago
        > My understanding is that people in those other countries have not been lead down such a path Ah, that makes sense. They would require evidence to believe something. So for example, in an election where there was no evidence of fraud, they would not believe there was fraud. Such as the one which occurred in 2020 in the U.S.
        jtxxwl2 6y ago
        Yes, and examples of evidence might include that some election facilities were administered by people with a seething hatred for one of the candidates, and election observers in some areas were prevented from being able to meaningfully monitor the election process. Of course there are many other potential forms of evidence, but those two right there would be enough to give anyone pretty good reason to believe there was election fraud, provided it happened outside of America, since election fraud can't take place in America.
        eprparadox 6y ago
        I assume you're talking about Republican administered election facilities and since they have a well documented seething hatred toward Biden you're suggesting that Biden actually won by a _much greater margin_ except for the fraud that no doubt occurred in Trump's favor.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> In the US vote rigging conspiracies are impossible No, they aren't, which is why our most recent ex-President (who also was notorious for inventing fantastical vote-rigging conspiracies out of no evidence in the same election) is currently at the center of a criminal investigation for one based on fairly hard evidence, and his political party is trying to change the Georgia State Constitution to derail the investigation. There's a difference between “That vote-rigging conspiracy is an unsubstantiated fantasy” and “Vote-rigging conspiracies are impossible.” Pretty much no one in the US has ever argued the latter.
- jtxxwl2 6y ago
  >No, they aren't Have I been mislead? If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and investigations and evidence in other countries as well, and that has seemingly not prevented election rigging there.
  - rspeele 6y ago
    It's kinda like how Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster could be real, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that they are almost certainly not real. Some motivated people have spent a lot of time and money trying to find proof of those creatures, and come up with nothing but some blurry pictures (including some known to be intentional fakes) and conjecture. So there's not much reason to take them seriously.
    - jtxxwl2 6y ago
      It's also kinda like how Al Capone might not have ordered the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he probably did, even though no one could definitively prove it. And also kinda like how Kim Jong Un might be the preferred candidate of 100% of North Koreans, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he is almost certainly not.

gbronner 6y ago

This is the explicit aim of prediction markets: to incentivize people with real knowledge to place bets, implicitly leaking information