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A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

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31–40 of 208 posts

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#31
post #22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Then why would non-insiders bet? The classic prediction market is guessing the weight of an elephant (or some animal) at a circus. The average guess of the crowd will actually get very close. But if someone knows the actual weight, no one would play.

Because they are, to use a technical term, "dumb as a stump". That's why they would participate despite not having any inside knowledge.

Or they are hedging their exposure to an unknown by betting in favor of an event that would be harmful/costly to them.

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#32

How often are these prediction markets "correct"? Has this been studied?

"Correct" is hard to define with prediction markets as likelihood often increases/decreases in the hours before a market is actually called or confirmed. i can't speak for the methodology here, but i remember this data report from a user: https://dune.com/alexmccullough/polymarket-brier-score

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#33
post #19
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insider bets are literally the purpose of prediction markets.

How? Then why would non-insiders bet? The classic prediction market is guessing the weight of an elephant (or some animal) at a circus. The average guess of the crowd will actually get very close. But if someone knows the actual weight, no one would play.

Non insiders would be if they think the odds are in their favor or that they predict that the market's opinion will shift.

>But if someone knows the actual weight, no one would play.

Now what if someone in the audience knew the weight of an average elephant, giving them an advantage. Would people still bet. I would guess yes, but they wouldn't bet as much as the person who did because they have less information.

While having better information may make it more likely for you to win, it is not surefire. Things can change last minute.

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#35
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took off from many different places so you'd have to somehow know that ~150 aircraft were taking off. If you happen to just see one spot, you'd likely just assume it was another bombing of a boat or a dock.

Or… someone seeing a bunch of commercial flights over the Caribbean getting cancelled. Could be anyone from airline ops to frustrated travelers stranded in Boston.

I guess... but I still think first thought would be just some more bombing. It's a big step to go from bombing boats, a dock, arresting and extraditing a foreign leader in the middle of the night.

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#36
post #34

Just a casual $32,537 bet a few hours before the secret operation. Nothing to see here.

It's my understanding a couple news agencies knew before everyone else but held off publishing. Seems like a good opportunity for nephew of someone in the media if not directly one of an official.

https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/journalism/nyt-wapo-...

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#37
post #18

I have to imagine governments are closely monitoring prediction markets as part of their intelligence apparatus. But then you just add another layer of subterfuge. Imagine a D-Day prediction market... "Will the Allies Land in Normandy, Pas-de-Calais, or somewhere else?" The US might buy a major position on Pas-de-Calais the night before as a decoy!

These prediction markets were proposed by DARPA iirc

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Prediction-Markets-...

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#38
post #27
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire idea of a prediction market is to aggregate insider information. If you don't have insiders, you're not doing predictions, you're just doing gambling. Granted: that's what almost every Polymarket user is actually doing. But that's a bad thing . The insider whales are the only ones actually using it for its intended purpose.

It's not 'predicting' when the outcome/answer is known. From the wiki entry on prediction markets "The main purpose of prediction markets are eliciting aggregating beliefs about an unknown future event."

I think you should probably read more about the background of prediction markets. Robin Hanson is a useful place to start. The whole concept of a prediction market is to convert private information into prices. That only works with "insider" information.

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#39
post #19
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insider bets are literally the purpose of prediction markets.

How? Then why would non-insiders bet? The classic prediction market is guessing the weight of an elephant (or some animal) at a circus. The average guess of the crowd will actually get very close. But if someone knows the actual weight, no one would play.

It doesn't matter if insiders are betting as long as the end result is in your favor.

Re: A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall

#40

How often are these prediction markets "correct"? Has this been studied?

It absolutely has been!

In general prediction markets can’t be “correct” or “incorrect” - for instance if a prediction market says there’s a 60% chance of an event occurring, and it doesn’t occur, was the market right or wrong? Well it’s hard to say - certainly the market said the event was more likely to occur than not, but only just, and who knows? Maybe the event _only just_ occurred, and very nearly didn’t!

So generally we say a prediction market is “correct” if it is “well calibrated”, which is to say that if we took all the events that the market said had a 60% chance of occurring, then approximately 60% percent of these events occurred (with the same holding true for all other percentages).

On this note, an interesting phenomenon that used to occur was “favorite-longshot bias”, where markets would consistently overestimate the likelihood of longshot events occurring - so events that the market predicted would occur 10% of the time would only occur 5% of the time. What’s fascinating is that once people realized that this bias exited, they began to exploit it by making bets against longshots, which had the effect of moving the market and removing the biases, making the markets well calibrated. It’s a pretty neat example of the efficient market hypothesis in action!

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