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I mentioned this on a different post - the biggest problem with prediction markets is not the gambling or dumb people losing money. Its the fact that it gives v

by bs7280 8mo ago

I mentioned this on a different post - the biggest problem with prediction markets is not the gambling or dumb people losing money. Its the fact that it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control. A small example of this would be NFL / NBA Refs fixing playoff games with a bad call or two. This actually happened 20 years ago, an NBA ref went to prison over being bribed just $2000 per game. The much worse example is the fact that you can make 100-1 odds on whether the US airstrikes Iran today... or How many times Pam Bondi says the word "China" in a press conference.

sysguest 8mo ago
+1 if you're not the person-in-complete-power, your bet is really likely to be 'rigged' against you I'd rather play dice or buy lotteries
roflyear 8mo ago
well, at least for really odd ones - like the china example - the liquidity is (probably) going to be really low. you need people buying both sides to make money. But for big events/talked about stuff/etc ofc this is not true.
- bs7280 8mo ago
  Again - Its not the money I care about, its what people are willing to do to make it.
  - eru 8mo ago
    If there's not much money to be made (because of illiquidity and adverse selection keeping market participants out), then there's not much incentive for people to do weird things.
Buttons840 8mo ago
It's a national security issue too. Somebody poor grunt who chose to earn a living by laboring (which has proven to be much less effective than being born with money) will be putting fuel in the bombers and thinking "I could just make an anonymous bet..." It's a national security issue. We saw this with the Venezuela attack. A flurry of trading and someone made $400,000 for placing a bet mere hours before the "surprise" attack. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-400000-payout-after-maduros-capture-put-prediction-markets-in-the-spotlight-heres-how-they-work https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-400000-payout-after-ma...
- ncr100 8mo ago
  This is fascinating.
- ironbound 8mo ago
  Pizza orders are also an indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory
  - dv_dt 8mo ago
    The irony that operational national security would be greatly improved if only they maintained a well staffed and resourced government kitchen for the Pentagon, but won't for many silly reasons. Oh no, lots of people would have to sit on idle standby many times, or gov't employees would get free meals.
    - kibwen 8mo ago
      The Pentagon has a ton of restaurants inside. There's literally an official mall-style map of all of them right here, I count almost 30: https://www.whs.mil/Services-and-Information/DoDCC/ https://www.whs.mil/Services-and-Information/DoDCC/ The pizza index is specifically about late-night pizza orders, when presumably most of those restaurants are closed (though some do appear to be open 24/7).
      - dv_dt 8mo ago
        If the pizza-indicator is still observable, then there is insufficient internal capacity (or perhaps it would be more correct to say insufficient at the right times) to mask the signal
    - bandrami 8mo ago
      There are several restaurants there. The Domino's thing is back from the first Gulf War and wasn't even really true then
  - silisili 8mo ago
JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control I'm sceptical that prediction markets uniquely enable this. Like, if you want to bet on U.S. airstrikes in the short term, you could always buy oil options (or short exposed companies). If you're in for the long term, you're buying something that benefits from cheaper gas, e.g. an additives company.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago
  All of these things are much more subject to the problem that effects policy generally: the law of unintended consequences. Betting on the policy, rather than an intended/expected longer-term outcome that is easily derailed by intervening events outside of your direct control is much more direct (plus, if you are corrupt enough to bet on policy you control, that policy is probably already seeking a longer-term aim that serves your existing financial interests, so the ability to bet on the policy itself makes the corruption more attractive by providing a more immediate and certain payoff on top of the longer-term, less certain one.)
- jlawson 8mo ago
  Prediction markets don't uniquely enable it, but they make it far more effective and easy. Insider trading is illegal. And for trades that aren't technically insider trading, often having some information ahead of time isn't as useful as it seems. Markets are known to react unpredictably to news; sometimes they move the opposite way from what you'd think, especially over the mid-long term, and there are many other influences on the price. With a prediction market though, if you know what'll happen in the world, you know exactly what you'll win in the market.
  - eru 8mo ago
    > Insider trading is illegal. Only in some markets and in some jurisdictions and some of the time. Eg until fairly recently 'insider trading' in commodities wasn't anything you were punished for in the US.
- bs7280 8mo ago
  You are not wrong, and I should clarify I also have a big problem with the current state of legal insider trading of elected officials, but this polymarket problem is much more extreme. You can get a guaranteed 100-1 payout by blowing up some random people on the other side of the planet. Way worse than making even 2-5x on a leveraged futures bet with insider info. In that example, the victim is usually just other rich people.
caconym_ 8mo ago
> the biggest problem with prediction markets is not the gambling or dumb people losing money. Its the fact that it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control This is quickly becoming the point of them, at least insofar as they are enjoying an extremely favorable regulatory environment courtesy of the Trump crew.
tptacek 8mo ago
This gets into a philosophical point about what a prediction market actually is. If it's a device for anonymously aggregating fragmented group information into a coherent accurate prediction, the lopsided bets are a feature; the only point of the market is the price signal, and the lopsided bets true up the price. But most of us understand that prediction markets aren't that, no matter what Robin Hansen said when he was helping invent the modern incarnation of things like Polymarket and Kalshi. They're gambling venues, and we have "Nevada Gaming Commission"-style concerns about fairness. To me, the next logical step is to say that they should be heavily regulated, but in the era of DraftKings, that seems off the table.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- eru 8mo ago
  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_legalizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_...
- SleepySteve_sk 8mo ago
  I think of them as "Accountability" markets. Someone who can influence the outcome is encouraged to make a public bet on their success, and define what the success criteria is. The bet is then a means to hold them publicly accountable for doing what they said they would do. The market then becomes a voting machine for the public to decide if they think the person will succeed or not.
  - banannaise 8mo ago
    > The market then becomes a voting machine for the public to decide if they think the person will succeed or not. Which would be great, if the mechanism and prize for "voting" were something other than people's basic means of survival. Gambling addiction isn't bad because there's something wrong with predicting outcomes, it's bad because it causes people to lose all of their money. "Kalshi, but with a maximum order size of $1" would be great. Kalshi, with a maximum order size of oh crap I can't pay my rent this month, is very bad!
qznc 8mo ago
Why isn’t political gambling in the UK a problem then?
- shagie 8mo ago
  It is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election_betting_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_el... > During the 2024 general election campaign, allegations were made that illicit bets were placed by political party members and police officers, some of whom may have had insider knowledge of the date of the general election before Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister at the time, publicly announced when it would be held. > ... > In April 2025, the Gambling Commission charged 15 people with offences under Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005, including Russell George, Tony Lee, Nick Mason, Laura Saunders, and Craig Williams. Trials are not expected to begin until September 2027 or January 2028.
  - eru 8mo ago
    People being charged doesn't mean there's a problem of any significant magnitude for society.
jvanderbot 8mo ago
That's the actual point. Everyone else is there to make money gambling, but the whole premise is to incentivize people with secret information to share it anonymously with the public, and take a reward for doing it. All without traceability or secret drops or whatever. POSIWID
- ncr100 8mo ago
  (The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does)
- cyberax 8mo ago
  Without additional signals, you can just as well use it to manipulate markets. E.g. there's a 1-to-1000 bet for $1m today on Trump falling down the staircase. So markets read this and go crazy, buying up the stock. The next day, nothing happens and the markets go down. But somebody could have made billions betting on that.
  - eru 8mo ago
    > But somebody could have made billions betting on that. Just because there's a small bid for 1-to-1000 on market, doesn't mean you can buy billions worth of contracts at that price.
- robocat 8mo ago
  > POSIWID Everyone can make up a silly purpose. Against POSIWID: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpose-of https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
  - jvanderbot 8mo ago
    Oh, I suppose one could interpret it as literally as possible, and arrive at that essay's conclusion. I have always considered the following to be basically synonymous: * In the absence of info, consider the intended output of the system to be what it is measured to be * The output of the system is best determined using observation vs reasoning Most of the examples there are moreso about two systems colliding. Yes, the purpose of the military is to disable the enemy and by god they are disabling a lot of each other so much so that they don't seem to be doing much else. Except the bus system, in which the purpose is indeed to turn fuel into exhaust, because the busses move whether they are full or not. The purpose of busses is to drive around, and it so happens people like to use them. If the purpose of busses was to shuttle people around, it could be done several other better ways. If the purpose is to gamble, it can be done many other ways. This system seems purpose-designed (or purpose-emergent) to coax out secret information in the form of large bets.
shagie 8mo ago
> How many times Pam Bondi says the word "China" in a press conference. A classic example is the color of the Queen's hat at Royal Ascot. https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/06/20/Bets-placed-on-queens-hat-at-Royal-Ascot/21521214006230/ https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/06/20/Bets-placed-on-queen... https://news.williamhill.com/horse-racing/queens-hat-betting-trends-royal-ascot/ https://news.williamhill.com/horse-racing/queens-hat-betting... And the relevant one from 2005 - https://www.foxnews.com/story/hat-trick-upsets-british-bookies https://www.foxnews.com/story/hat-trick-upsets-british-booki... > But alarms were raised Thursday morning, hours before the royal appearance, when a run of bets for brown started coming in, displacing light blue as the favorite. > "Nobody was backing brown at all and suddenly everyone wanted in on it," Paddy Power (search), owner of the eponymous chain of betting shops that inaugurated the hat bet 10 years ago, told The Times. > Power's odds on brown went from 12-1, to 2-1, to even and finally to 8-11 before he yanked the bet at 11:30 a.m., 2½ hours before the Queen was due to show. > "Someone must have been in the know. We laid 50 pounds at 20-1 and 200 pounds at 10-1 and some smaller bets," David Hood, spokesman for rival betting chain William Hill (search), told the Daily Telegraph. > ... > When Elizabeth II finally made her appearance, she was indeed wearing a brown hat with cream trim. > "Somebody has made a tidy sum," sniffed Hood. > Both he and Power, who estimated his firm lost about 10,000 pounds, or $18,000, suspected palace insiders.
TeMPOraL 8mo ago
Plenty of more fun dynamics. For example, in some cases it becomes a way for voting for decisions one otherwise wouldn't control. If a person in position to make a decision doesn't really care about any choice in particular, seeing the prediction market lean one way would incentivize them to choose the opposite, making a short sale immediately before. It also makes sense for the people voting: by betting against the outcome they want, they end up either a) paying for getting things their way, or b) getting consolation payoff if the decision makers pick the undesired choice.
TZubiri 8mo ago
I think the war ones are the only real concern. In the context of legislating prediction markets or not, sports is not a concern at all. Whether it's a net positive or negative for important shit like war and corruption, we'll see, but if it helps in the important stuff, but damages sports, sorry bud.
- bs7280 8mo ago
  First - I can not comprehend how you could possibly have a charitable interpretation on the war point and how it might have a net positive. I'm not trying to be condescending or anything, I would like to hear a single positive for being able to make BTC bets on killing people. Second - even if you are not one of the millions of Americans that give a shit about sports, there is still a massive fraud implications just by the existence of crypto prediction markets. All it takes is one bad call to changed the outcome of game. The Superbowl last year had over $1 billion wagered on it.
  - baobabKoodaa 8mo ago
    If I live in a country that is under threat of being attacked by U.S. it is nice to have a website where I can look to get a reasonable probability that the attack happens
    - Atreiden 8mo ago
      That figure will also be hugely unreliable, because as we've seen, there is tremendous incentive for insiders to leverage their information immediately before it's relevant. If the odds sit at 97% NO for weeks or months, then 3 hours before the invasion an insider makes their play, you would have to be constantly monitoring this market, interpret that spike correctly as an insider trade, and be able to, in that very short amount of time, take actions that change the outcome for you, personally. Doesn't seem like much of an upside to me.
    - bs7280 8mo ago
      The existence of the odds making for a way increases the odds a war happens to begin with.
wyager 8mo ago
> Its the fact that it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control. OK, and? The market is just paying them to make information about their decisions public.
- socialcommenter 8mo ago
  Parent comment has a strong implication that the bets will impact their decisions, and invariably for the worse. If "Politician XYZ takes the day off and sits on the couch" were paying 100-1 odds, it wouldn't be such a big drama (although, again, the existence of the bet would still impact their behaviour)
  - bs7280 8mo ago
    Correct. I've always had a hard time getting my point phrased in a way that gets people to understand my point, but I'm baffled that people don't see an issue with creating something that says "Hey if you blow up these random people in Iran today you can make $50 million dollars and no one can punish you" and thinking its not a big fucking deal. This also isn't a theoretical issue that may happen - it dissapoints me that very few people know this but - on October 10th when BTC fell from $122k to $104k because of a trump announcement, someone created a short position 30 minutes before Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports and profited $200M USD.
- bs7280 8mo ago
  I replied to 1 comment below yours - but I want to ask, how do you think this incentivizes people to make info about decisions public? That would lower the return on their bets.
joelthelion 8mo ago
A lot of these issues mostly disappear if you use play money. It turns out that play money prediction markets are just as good as the real money ones.
- adrianwaj 8mo ago
  Perhaps a bet should convert into play money if the stakes get too high and the temptation for "induced manipulation" is deemed too strong. The issue is how high is too high? Imagine a jury or judge start betting on their own cases? $500 might not sway them, but $200,000 bets coming in from villain/victims' relatives might and they thereafter decide to enter the market and also influence (or force) a legal outcome. So it can be used as a stealth form of bribery if external parties seek to make it profitable for insiders to effectuate an outcome. So at what point should the bet switch over to play money? And what happens if all that play money can one day be redeemed into a new coin? So with the rise of prediction markets one can predict a subsequent rise in surveillance. Can you even flag a bet on PolyMarket? "Khamenei out as Supreme Leader of Iran by March 31?" https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-of-iran-by-march-31 https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-... There's almost $7m in volume there. But what if multiple Israel-aligned groups coughed up say $250m and bet "no" then that's like a bounty, right, for someone in Iran to effectuate a yes on the ground? Khamenei himself could step down too after involving himself in the bet and then use the proceeds to ensure his ongoing protection. I don't know. PolyMarket or PolyPay?
  - dlubarov 8mo ago
    Yeah - in principle betting markets are also bribery markets. Instead of betting based on expectations, one can bet the opposite of the outcome they desire. It's interesting how those markets avoid any language like "death," I assume to not give the obvious appearance of an assassination market, though death seems covered by "is prevented from fulfilling his duties".
PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
I've been telling people it only takes 2 or 3 people to throw a football game. The person who hires the ref(optional), the ref, and the person who places the bet. And I was told I was crazy. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Nope I was right.
- eru 8mo ago
  Huh? It's pretty obvious that you can influence the outcome of a sports event, if you can influence the ref or if you can get a player on one side to pretend to be less competent than she normally is.
  - PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
    10 years ago we'd be called conspiracy theorists.
    - eru 8mo ago
      I think the disagreement was over whether it was likely that people threw matches like this, not whether it was possible.
    - 4ggr0 8mo ago
      Sports Betting Scandals have been a thing for probably almost as long as sports exist, i don't get why you think that this was a thoughtcrime 10 years ago? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_betting#Famous_betting_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_betting#Famous_betting_... wouldn't surprise me to find out that even cavemen were manipulating outcomes of stone-throwing contests to earn some more meat.
eru 8mo ago
How is that any worse than existing financial markets? You can already short sell a company and then cause trouble for them, eg with an anonymous phone call of a bomb threat or whatever. Typically, the authorities will catch you, because they check suspiciously lucky traders. They can do the same with prediction markets. > A small example of this would be NFL / NBA Refs fixing playoff games with a bad call or two. This actually happened 20 years ago, an NBA ref went to prison over being bribed just $2000 per game. The outcome of a sports game isn't exactly important in the grand scheme of things. And no one is forced to bet on sports to hedge their harvest against the weather or something like that. It's all entertainment. > The much worse example is the fact that you can make 100-1 odds on whether the US airstrikes Iran today... or How many times Pam Bondi says the word "China" in a press conference. So? Don't participate in these particular bets then?
tj-teej 8mo ago
Isn't this the intent of a prediction markets? IIRC the original prediction markets existed to try and get as close as possible to finding the true answer to open questions. Someone willing to bet a lot of money on an outcome (because they have an edge/are very sure of an outcome) is the point, they're putting their money where their mouth is...

by bs7280 8mo ago

sysguest 8mo ago

+1 if you're not the person-in-complete-power, your bet is really likely to be 'rigged' against you I'd rather play dice or buy lotteries

roflyear 8mo ago

well, at least for really odd ones - like the china example - the liquidity is (probably) going to be really low. you need people buying both sides to make money. But for big events/talked about stuff/etc ofc this is not true.

bs7280 8mo ago
Again - Its not the money I care about, its what people are willing to do to make it.
- eru 8mo ago
  If there's not much money to be made (because of illiquidity and adverse selection keeping market participants out), then there's not much incentive for people to do weird things.

Buttons840 8mo ago

It's a national security issue too. Somebody poor grunt who chose to earn a living by laboring (which has proven to be much less effective than being born with money) will be putting fuel in the bombers and thinking "I could just make an anonymous bet..." It's a national security issue. We saw this with the Venezuela attack. A flurry of trading and someone made $400,000 for placing a bet mere hours before the "surprise" attack. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-400000-payout-after-maduros-capture-put-prediction-markets-in-the-spotlight-heres-how-they-work https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-400000-payout-after-ma...

ncr100 8mo ago
This is fascinating.
ironbound 8mo ago
Pizza orders are also an indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory
- dv_dt 8mo ago
  The irony that operational national security would be greatly improved if only they maintained a well staffed and resourced government kitchen for the Pentagon, but won't for many silly reasons. Oh no, lots of people would have to sit on idle standby many times, or gov't employees would get free meals.
  - kibwen 8mo ago
    The Pentagon has a ton of restaurants inside. There's literally an official mall-style map of all of them right here, I count almost 30: https://www.whs.mil/Services-and-Information/DoDCC/ https://www.whs.mil/Services-and-Information/DoDCC/ The pizza index is specifically about late-night pizza orders, when presumably most of those restaurants are closed (though some do appear to be open 24/7).
    - dv_dt 8mo ago
      If the pizza-indicator is still observable, then there is insufficient internal capacity (or perhaps it would be more correct to say insufficient at the right times) to mask the signal
  - bandrami 8mo ago
    There are several restaurants there. The Domino's thing is back from the first Gulf War and wasn't even really true then
- silisili 8mo ago

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago

> it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control I'm sceptical that prediction markets uniquely enable this. Like, if you want to bet on U.S. airstrikes in the short term, you could always buy oil options (or short exposed companies). If you're in for the long term, you're buying something that benefits from cheaper gas, e.g. an additives company.

dragonwriter 8mo ago
All of these things are much more subject to the problem that effects policy generally: the law of unintended consequences. Betting on the policy, rather than an intended/expected longer-term outcome that is easily derailed by intervening events outside of your direct control is much more direct (plus, if you are corrupt enough to bet on policy you control, that policy is probably already seeking a longer-term aim that serves your existing financial interests, so the ability to bet on the policy itself makes the corruption more attractive by providing a more immediate and certain payoff on top of the longer-term, less certain one.)
jlawson 8mo ago
Prediction markets don't uniquely enable it, but they make it far more effective and easy. Insider trading is illegal. And for trades that aren't technically insider trading, often having some information ahead of time isn't as useful as it seems. Markets are known to react unpredictably to news; sometimes they move the opposite way from what you'd think, especially over the mid-long term, and there are many other influences on the price. With a prediction market though, if you know what'll happen in the world, you know exactly what you'll win in the market.
- eru 8mo ago
  > Insider trading is illegal. Only in some markets and in some jurisdictions and some of the time. Eg until fairly recently 'insider trading' in commodities wasn't anything you were punished for in the US.
bs7280 8mo ago
You are not wrong, and I should clarify I also have a big problem with the current state of legal insider trading of elected officials, but this polymarket problem is much more extreme. You can get a guaranteed 100-1 payout by blowing up some random people on the other side of the planet. Way worse than making even 2-5x on a leveraged futures bet with insider info. In that example, the victim is usually just other rich people.

caconym_ 8mo ago

> the biggest problem with prediction markets is not the gambling or dumb people losing money. Its the fact that it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control This is quickly becoming the point of them, at least insofar as they are enjoying an extremely favorable regulatory environment courtesy of the Trump crew.

tptacek 8mo ago

This gets into a philosophical point about what a prediction market actually is. If it's a device for anonymously aggregating fragmented group information into a coherent accurate prediction, the lopsided bets are a feature; the only point of the market is the price signal, and the lopsided bets true up the price. But most of us understand that prediction markets aren't that, no matter what Robin Hansen said when he was helping invent the modern incarnation of things like Polymarket and Kalshi. They're gambling venues, and we have "Nevada Gaming Commission"-style concerns about fairness. To me, the next logical step is to say that they should be heavily regulated, but in the era of DraftKings, that seems off the table.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
eru 8mo ago
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_legalizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_...
SleepySteve_sk 8mo ago
I think of them as "Accountability" markets. Someone who can influence the outcome is encouraged to make a public bet on their success, and define what the success criteria is. The bet is then a means to hold them publicly accountable for doing what they said they would do. The market then becomes a voting machine for the public to decide if they think the person will succeed or not.
- banannaise 8mo ago
  > The market then becomes a voting machine for the public to decide if they think the person will succeed or not. Which would be great, if the mechanism and prize for "voting" were something other than people's basic means of survival. Gambling addiction isn't bad because there's something wrong with predicting outcomes, it's bad because it causes people to lose all of their money. "Kalshi, but with a maximum order size of $1" would be great. Kalshi, with a maximum order size of oh crap I can't pay my rent this month, is very bad!

qznc 8mo ago

Why isn’t political gambling in the UK a problem then?

shagie 8mo ago
It is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election_betting_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_el... > During the 2024 general election campaign, allegations were made that illicit bets were placed by political party members and police officers, some of whom may have had insider knowledge of the date of the general election before Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister at the time, publicly announced when it would be held. > ... > In April 2025, the Gambling Commission charged 15 people with offences under Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005, including Russell George, Tony Lee, Nick Mason, Laura Saunders, and Craig Williams. Trials are not expected to begin until September 2027 or January 2028.
- eru 8mo ago
  People being charged doesn't mean there's a problem of any significant magnitude for society.

jvanderbot 8mo ago

That's the actual point. Everyone else is there to make money gambling, but the whole premise is to incentivize people with secret information to share it anonymously with the public, and take a reward for doing it. All without traceability or secret drops or whatever. POSIWID

ncr100 8mo ago
(The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does)
cyberax 8mo ago
Without additional signals, you can just as well use it to manipulate markets. E.g. there's a 1-to-1000 bet for $1m today on Trump falling down the staircase. So markets read this and go crazy, buying up the stock. The next day, nothing happens and the markets go down. But somebody could have made billions betting on that.
- eru 8mo ago
  > But somebody could have made billions betting on that. Just because there's a small bid for 1-to-1000 on market, doesn't mean you can buy billions worth of contracts at that price.
robocat 8mo ago
> POSIWID Everyone can make up a silly purpose. Against POSIWID: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpose-of https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
- jvanderbot 8mo ago
  Oh, I suppose one could interpret it as literally as possible, and arrive at that essay's conclusion. I have always considered the following to be basically synonymous: * In the absence of info, consider the intended output of the system to be what it is measured to be * The output of the system is best determined using observation vs reasoning Most of the examples there are moreso about two systems colliding. Yes, the purpose of the military is to disable the enemy and by god they are disabling a lot of each other so much so that they don't seem to be doing much else. Except the bus system, in which the purpose is indeed to turn fuel into exhaust, because the busses move whether they are full or not. The purpose of busses is to drive around, and it so happens people like to use them. If the purpose of busses was to shuttle people around, it could be done several other better ways. If the purpose is to gamble, it can be done many other ways. This system seems purpose-designed (or purpose-emergent) to coax out secret information in the form of large bets.

shagie 8mo ago

> How many times Pam Bondi says the word "China" in a press conference. A classic example is the color of the Queen's hat at Royal Ascot. https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/06/20/Bets-placed-on-queens-hat-at-Royal-Ascot/21521214006230/ https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/06/20/Bets-placed-on-queen... https://news.williamhill.com/horse-racing/queens-hat-betting-trends-royal-ascot/ https://news.williamhill.com/horse-racing/queens-hat-betting... And the relevant one from 2005 - https://www.foxnews.com/story/hat-trick-upsets-british-bookies https://www.foxnews.com/story/hat-trick-upsets-british-booki... > But alarms were raised Thursday morning, hours before the royal appearance, when a run of bets for brown started coming in, displacing light blue as the favorite. > "Nobody was backing brown at all and suddenly everyone wanted in on it," Paddy Power (search), owner of the eponymous chain of betting shops that inaugurated the hat bet 10 years ago, told The Times. > Power's odds on brown went from 12-1, to 2-1, to even and finally to 8-11 before he yanked the bet at 11:30 a.m., 2½ hours before the Queen was due to show. > "Someone must have been in the know. We laid 50 pounds at 20-1 and 200 pounds at 10-1 and some smaller bets," David Hood, spokesman for rival betting chain William Hill (search), told the Daily Telegraph. > ... > When Elizabeth II finally made her appearance, she was indeed wearing a brown hat with cream trim. > "Somebody has made a tidy sum," sniffed Hood. > Both he and Power, who estimated his firm lost about 10,000 pounds, or $18,000, suspected palace insiders.

TeMPOraL 8mo ago

Plenty of more fun dynamics. For example, in some cases it becomes a way for voting for decisions one otherwise wouldn't control. If a person in position to make a decision doesn't really care about any choice in particular, seeing the prediction market lean one way would incentivize them to choose the opposite, making a short sale immediately before. It also makes sense for the people voting: by betting against the outcome they want, they end up either a) paying for getting things their way, or b) getting consolation payoff if the decision makers pick the undesired choice.

TZubiri 8mo ago

I think the war ones are the only real concern. In the context of legislating prediction markets or not, sports is not a concern at all. Whether it's a net positive or negative for important shit like war and corruption, we'll see, but if it helps in the important stuff, but damages sports, sorry bud.

bs7280 8mo ago
First - I can not comprehend how you could possibly have a charitable interpretation on the war point and how it might have a net positive. I'm not trying to be condescending or anything, I would like to hear a single positive for being able to make BTC bets on killing people. Second - even if you are not one of the millions of Americans that give a shit about sports, there is still a massive fraud implications just by the existence of crypto prediction markets. All it takes is one bad call to changed the outcome of game. The Superbowl last year had over $1 billion wagered on it.
- baobabKoodaa 8mo ago
  If I live in a country that is under threat of being attacked by U.S. it is nice to have a website where I can look to get a reasonable probability that the attack happens
  - Atreiden 8mo ago
    That figure will also be hugely unreliable, because as we've seen, there is tremendous incentive for insiders to leverage their information immediately before it's relevant. If the odds sit at 97% NO for weeks or months, then 3 hours before the invasion an insider makes their play, you would have to be constantly monitoring this market, interpret that spike correctly as an insider trade, and be able to, in that very short amount of time, take actions that change the outcome for you, personally. Doesn't seem like much of an upside to me.
  - bs7280 8mo ago
    The existence of the odds making for a way increases the odds a war happens to begin with.

wyager 8mo ago

> Its the fact that it gives very powerful people a vehicle to make lobsided bets on outcomes they control. OK, and? The market is just paying them to make information about their decisions public.

socialcommenter 8mo ago
Parent comment has a strong implication that the bets will impact their decisions, and invariably for the worse. If "Politician XYZ takes the day off and sits on the couch" were paying 100-1 odds, it wouldn't be such a big drama (although, again, the existence of the bet would still impact their behaviour)
- bs7280 8mo ago
  Correct. I've always had a hard time getting my point phrased in a way that gets people to understand my point, but I'm baffled that people don't see an issue with creating something that says "Hey if you blow up these random people in Iran today you can make $50 million dollars and no one can punish you" and thinking its not a big fucking deal. This also isn't a theoretical issue that may happen - it dissapoints me that very few people know this but - on October 10th when BTC fell from $122k to $104k because of a trump announcement, someone created a short position 30 minutes before Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports and profited $200M USD.
bs7280 8mo ago
I replied to 1 comment below yours - but I want to ask, how do you think this incentivizes people to make info about decisions public? That would lower the return on their bets.

joelthelion 8mo ago

A lot of these issues mostly disappear if you use play money. It turns out that play money prediction markets are just as good as the real money ones.

adrianwaj 8mo ago
Perhaps a bet should convert into play money if the stakes get too high and the temptation for "induced manipulation" is deemed too strong. The issue is how high is too high? Imagine a jury or judge start betting on their own cases? $500 might not sway them, but $200,000 bets coming in from villain/victims' relatives might and they thereafter decide to enter the market and also influence (or force) a legal outcome. So it can be used as a stealth form of bribery if external parties seek to make it profitable for insiders to effectuate an outcome. So at what point should the bet switch over to play money? And what happens if all that play money can one day be redeemed into a new coin? So with the rise of prediction markets one can predict a subsequent rise in surveillance. Can you even flag a bet on PolyMarket? "Khamenei out as Supreme Leader of Iran by March 31?" https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-of-iran-by-march-31 https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-... There's almost $7m in volume there. But what if multiple Israel-aligned groups coughed up say $250m and bet "no" then that's like a bounty, right, for someone in Iran to effectuate a yes on the ground? Khamenei himself could step down too after involving himself in the bet and then use the proceeds to ensure his ongoing protection. I don't know. PolyMarket or PolyPay?
- dlubarov 8mo ago
  Yeah - in principle betting markets are also bribery markets. Instead of betting based on expectations, one can bet the opposite of the outcome they desire. It's interesting how those markets avoid any language like "death," I assume to not give the obvious appearance of an assassination market, though death seems covered by "is prevented from fulfilling his duties".

PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago

I've been telling people it only takes 2 or 3 people to throw a football game. The person who hires the ref(optional), the ref, and the person who places the bet. And I was told I was crazy. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Nope I was right.

eru 8mo ago
Huh? It's pretty obvious that you can influence the outcome of a sports event, if you can influence the ref or if you can get a player on one side to pretend to be less competent than she normally is.
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
  10 years ago we'd be called conspiracy theorists.
  - eru 8mo ago
    I think the disagreement was over whether it was likely that people threw matches like this, not whether it was possible.
  - 4ggr0 8mo ago
    Sports Betting Scandals have been a thing for probably almost as long as sports exist, i don't get why you think that this was a thoughtcrime 10 years ago? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_betting#Famous_betting_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_betting#Famous_betting_... wouldn't surprise me to find out that even cavemen were manipulating outcomes of stone-throwing contests to earn some more meat.

eru 8mo ago

How is that any worse than existing financial markets? You can already short sell a company and then cause trouble for them, eg with an anonymous phone call of a bomb threat or whatever. Typically, the authorities will catch you, because they check suspiciously lucky traders. They can do the same with prediction markets. > A small example of this would be NFL / NBA Refs fixing playoff games with a bad call or two. This actually happened 20 years ago, an NBA ref went to prison over being bribed just $2000 per game. The outcome of a sports game isn't exactly important in the grand scheme of things. And no one is forced to bet on sports to hedge their harvest against the weather or something like that. It's all entertainment. > The much worse example is the fact that you can make 100-1 odds on whether the US airstrikes Iran today... or How many times Pam Bondi says the word "China" in a press conference. So? Don't participate in these particular bets then?

tj-teej 8mo ago

Isn't this the intent of a prediction markets? IIRC the original prediction markets existed to try and get as close as possible to finding the true answer to open questions. Someone willing to bet a lot of money on an outcome (because they have an edge/are very sure of an outcome) is the point, they're putting their money where their mouth is...