The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return • Hacker News Board

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#551

Post by kelseyfrog » Fri, May 30, 2025, 2:21 AM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #33

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

religion (that is, an objective morality) has always been the only thing the masses have when confronted with the great pagan principle: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"

> religion has always been the only thing the masses have

This is broadly speaking true because religion is one example of a coping mechanism at cultural scale. If you trace the genealogy of morals, these precise beliefs - humility, temperance, kindness, patience - are all survival strategies of people being oppressed. At a large enough scale, it becomes embedded in moral reality itself ie: in religion.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#552

Post by em-bee » Fri, May 30, 2025, 2:25 AM UTC

imchillyb wrote: post #539

excalibur wrote: post #62

Everyone just seems to assume that whether Jesus has returned will be obvious and easily verifiable. As if they could prove that Jesus isn't already here.

Matthew 24:4-31 describes -the exact- method of His return. The description is very much like an alien force deceleration within our solar system, and arriving en masse. It'll be noticeable worldwide. Read this and tell me if there's any ambiguity. --- 4 And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. 5 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will mislead many peop…

the ambiguity is in the question on whether this should be taken literally.

also elsewhere it is stated that jesus will return like a thief in the night. so perhaps he was already here and most people haven't noticed.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#553

Post by throwup238 » Fri, May 30, 2025, 2:36 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #378

vintermann wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come back and reign for a thousand years, but not touch private contact law and definitively let you keep and enjoy the fruits of the money you bet on him. Yeah, I won't rule out that they exist, but I think there are far better ways of "betting on Jesus" according to most denominations. I think price fluctuations in a market like this is more down to people betting on a bigger fool coming along, or otherwise convinc…

John Goodman’s character in O Brother was a man who realized selling bibles was a lucrative business. He was a con man. I think you’re on the right track. It’s not the betters but the bookie who you need to look askance at here.

> John Goodman’s character in O Brother was a man who realized selling bibles was a lucrative business. He was a con man.

John Goodman also played the patriarch of a Megachurch family in the Righteous Gemstones. Maybe there's a pattern there? He did play a Senator in Alpha House too.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#554

Post by wiradikusuma » Fri, May 30, 2025, 2:50 AM UTC

hatradiowigwam wrote: post #173

wiradikusuma wrote: post #55

I read many comments that essentially say, "Today's (how we practice) Christianity/churches are definitely not something he'd approve of when he returns". I live in the largest Muslim country in the world, and I'd say the majority of people also think that the "commercialization" (for lack of a better term) of their religion is also "too much". It seems people do have a "conscience" (for lack of a better term). But w…

> I live in the largest Muslim country in the world Are you a Muslim? I have a question for you... if I crawled onto your doorstep beaten and starving, would you invite me in and feed you? I am ignorant of Muslim teachings, and I don't know if this sort of things is covered...that's why I'm asking you. I'm a Christian, and if you crawled onto MY doorstep, I would be ashamed with myself if I did not invite you in and…

I'm not a Muslim, but I'm very sure it (and all religions, I suppose) has the same teachings.

In my opinion, they seem opposed because both religions claim to be the only source of truth and strongly try to spread that belief. It's like TAB vs SPACE, you can't have both in the same file, and ideally not in the same project.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#555

Post by vkou » Fri, May 30, 2025, 2:51 AM UTC

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #414

vkou wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole point of faith. You're supposed to believe despite evidence.

Why should you believe despite evidence?

Because if you don't, you'll face social ostracism, physical censure, and a promise of deferred spiritual punishment.

When those pressures or promises of rewards aren't present, people rarely stumble into any particular religion.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#556

Post by mullingitover » Fri, May 30, 2025, 3:30 AM UTC

swores wrote: post #528

hinkley wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually that’s, “a tax on people bad at math.” If I put an effort into not being cynical, I would say public funds spent on R&D are the more accurate tax on hope. We are collecting money for Progress and Progress will save us from today’s inescapable facts. We hope it will not replace them with something worse.

I disagree, the vast majority of people I've known who gamble understand perfectly well that the odds are against them, they're not choosing to do it because they wrongly believe the EV to be positive. In some cases it's because the enjoyment they get is worth losing money (and/or they wrongly believe it will be), in some cases it's because even though buying weekly lottery tickets is extremely unlikely to be worth i…

> Sure there are also people who think things like "my roulette strategy is bound to work", but it's a tiny proportion.

Depends on which activities you gamble on, I suppose.

There's an old quote: “When as a young and unknown man I started to be successful I was referred to as a gambler. My operations increased in scope. Then I was a speculator. The sphere of my activities continued to expand and presently I was known as a banker. Actually I had been doing the same thing all the time.”

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#557

Post by somenameforme » Fri, May 30, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #443

somenameforme wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd challenge your position with a simple thought experiment. You're given a device with a button. When you push that button a random person you don't know will be killed. In exchange you'll receive $1 million in completely clean money, and nobody will ever know you pushed the button or how many times you pushed it. So how many times would you push it? Such is our character that asking how many times you'd push it is…

Personally, I would take a strictly utilitarian approach. If I thought I could save >1 life for $1 million, I would press the button. The number of presses would depend solely on the number of lives I think I (or a humanitarian organization) could save with the money. I think that most people with a moral compass would either take this approach, or would not press the button at all. I think your second paragraph is m…

No, it's the perfect example because we can't help but rationalize a way to justify pushing it. If you now gave every single person that button, humanity would be extinct within minutes - many of them rationalizing that they're saving humanity.

This is the heart of where the saying that power corrupts comes from. It's not that power corrupts but that these sort of decisions are ones that will never be available to anybody without power. Yet for those with power it's not that far away from many practical scenarios. In other words, we start corrupt, but our impotence mitigates the relevance of that. Power just reveals our character.

And no, religious people are obviously not immune from this, but with a fixed set of values rationalization becomes far more farcical than without. The Bible's position on homicide, let alone for personal gain, is unambiguous. A person without any set of fixed values, by contrast, will have no problem justifying and rationalizing even the most egregious acts, so long as the reward is seen as desirable enough.

---

To respond to your edit, consider that you're basically doing a version of the trolley problem where you have the choice to redirect the track from killing one person, to killing two, but you get a million bucks for doing so. And you're now arguing that this is the utilitarian choice. It's plainly a false rationalization, but we can so easily convince ourselves that it's reasonable. Our extreme strength at rationalization is humanity's biggest moral and ethical failing. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#558

Post by john-h-k » Fri, May 30, 2025, 4:01 AM UTC

tmiku wrote: post #251

It's worth nothing that it takes less money than you may expect to significantly shift a prediction market's trading price. This article, while its tone aged poorly with the relevant election results, covers the math behind this quite well. https://quantian.substack.com/p/market-prices-are-not-probab...

> This article, while its tone aged poorly with the relevant election results,

While I get your point, it’s critical to recognise that betting 90% on a six being rolled doesn’t make you correct when a six is rolled. You can believe polymarket was truly mispriced even with this outcome

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#559

Post by sterlind » Fri, May 30, 2025, 4:12 AM UTC

tengwar2 wrote: post #355

klipt wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that how the rich men are squeezing into heaven these days? "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" There's a theory that the eye of the needle was a narrow gate in Jerusalem's city wall that was notoriously hard for camels to squeeze through. But seems the hard evidence for that is limited.

That story is only tracked back to the 1400's, so not credible. The currently favoured theory is that this was a translation error. Apparently in Aramaic (the language of Judaea and Galilee), the word for "camel" is very close to the word for "rope". As with all parables (and this does qualify as a parable) it may be intended to reward some thought - e.g. the only way of getting a rope through the eye of needle is to…

stripping away the rope leaves a thread, and stripping away a man's riches leaves him poor. give it away, in other words.

Re: The Polymarket users betting on when Jesus will return

#560

Post by sterlind » Fri, May 30, 2025, 4:14 AM UTC

wileydragonfly wrote: post #550

tengwar2 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story is only tracked back to the 1400's, so not credible. The currently favoured theory is that this was a translation error. Apparently in Aramaic (the language of Judaea and Galilee), the word for "camel" is very close to the word for "rope". As with all parables (and this does qualify as a parable) it may be intended to reward some thought - e.g. the only way of getting a rope through the eye of needle is to…

Is your source on this that 90s era website I’ve seen passed around for 20 years? You truly think that thousands of theologians over hundreds of years never noticed this one simple coincidence?

thousands of theologians over hundreds of years probably passed it around until the '90s, when a few learned HTML and put it online. I doubt the website's authors were the first.