The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

So much, possibly the vast majority, of intellectual energy that goes into prediction markets is not about forecasting. Like the example Eric gives of “This Market Will Resolve No At The End Of 2025”, it's about arbitrage, it's about edge cases, it's about interest rates, it's about resolution disputes, it's about sniping the dumb money faster than others.

Prediction markets are a brilliant way to incentivize accuracy and good research. But you don't see much of that on Polymarket.

Rations will not help you or your family if civilization breaks down. Without a literal army, you are no more powerful than the ones who did nothing to prepare. All rations do is ensure that you starve to death a month later than expected.

Even better, those of you that collected guns and ammo as a hobby are about as prepared as the people who jokingly collect bottle caps in reference to Fallout. You have ensured you die first.

If you are not currently capable of planting, tending, and harvesting an entire acre of potatoes every year, you will not survive post civilization. If you do not have a stable of oxen and a simple machine shop to repair the old fashioned steel plow you own, you will not survive. If you do not already have fully formed pest control, without chemical inputs or external solutions, you will not survive.

It took humanity thousands of years to develop agriculture. Farming isn't a game. You will not pick it up after the end of civilization. You will not get it right on the first try. You will not reinvent it while hungry. Even if you get lucky and nothing goes wrong for a few growing seasons, you WILL have a failed crop eventually, and you will starve. Even successful farming is an eventual death sentence without civilization.

People who prep for "after the end" are not serious people. If you had a serious concern about the potential fall of civilization, you would not buy food and bullets, you would be throwing every resource you have at improving democratic representation and access, to prevent civilization from falling.

It might not be possible to restart if we kill it.

Prepping is like trying to develop a backup strategy after the datacenter has already burned down. Even if you are successful, have you really, honestly, considered what success looks like?

In the year before the 2020 election, a market opened on predictit called "Will Hillary run for president? Yes/No"

First this was a reasonable market, but quickly it became obvious she wasn't running (because she repeatedly said she wasn't, there was no campaign created at all, absolutely zero indicators she was running because she wasn't). Predictit allowed a comment section where people worked themselves into a frenzy every time some hillary "news" dropped that somehow secretly indicated she was running a phantom campaign. She missed primary registration deadlines - that only made the "Yes" market move up. There were still people hammering Yes up until a few weeks before the actual election and they closed the market.

Anyway it was the same thing. Low % "Yes" and 95+% "No." However, I found an edge holding on to a "baseline" Yes I'd established (1-2%, I can't remember) and just sell the waves of "news" that would spike it to 5+%. Then buy again at the baseline. There were a lot of shenanigans in the comments and people attempting to move the market with various tactics - it was a wild ride and one of my favorite markets I'd ever studied/participated in.

There are probably some true believers in the "Yes" jesus purchasers here but I imagine a lot of what I'm describing here too.