Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story • Hacker News Board

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#481

Post by derangedHorse » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

geor9e wrote: post #466

sam0x17 wrote: post #459

I really wonder whether privacy would actually be the answer here --- prediction markets as they are now where the odds are public really shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called "outcome-shaping markets" because largely that is what they do, they let people shape real-world outcomes with massive amounts of liquidity. If instead these were privacy protocols where you can see how much liquidity is…

Surely I am misreading what you mean here. But your comment very much reads like you think "Iran strikes Israel on March 10" at 25% odds is what in fact caused Iran to strike Israel on March 10. I'll search the space of other interpretations in the mean time, but if you could help me out here and clarify…

> But your comment very much reads like you think "Iran strikes Israel on March 10" at 25% odds is what in fact caused Iran to strike Israel on March 10

I don't know how you extrapolated that from the parent's comment. It literally said nothing about the cause and effect of this particular event.

Knowing the odds in a prediction market IS a big part of the problem brought up in the linked article though (and the bets themselves). Knowing how much can be made from being right creates an upper-bound on what a financially-rational malicious actor will spend in trying to change the outcome.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#482

Post by uoaei » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #441

red_admiral wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've certainly turned out different than Scott Alexander predicted, once the markets were opened up to people who are not in the wider rationalist community. Not foreseeing the amount of sports betting that would take place, is kind of a failure of rationality in the first place, and I say this as someone who absolutely respects the community in general.

The failure of the rationalist community is they mistook rationalization for rationality.

I may use different definitions than you, but I put it as "they conflate rationality and reason".

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#483

Post by kspacewalk2 » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #339

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sane system doesn't "throw" human beings in jail for flippant and arbitrary reasons. Sociopaths exploit this, to be sure.

The reasons are neither flippant or arbitrary.

What is the law being broken?

"Lack of regulation clarity on your part does not constitute a crime on mine". Why is that not a valid defence?

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#484

Post by uoaei » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #43

fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or…

It has nothing to do with oversight and everything to do with extralegal means of enforcing your win.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#485

Post by Terr_ » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

variadix wrote: post #400

hrimfaxi wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> insider trading is the point Says who?

Insiders bring information to a market. Intelligent analysis and prediction also does, but obviously insiders have special information they are incentivized to bring to the market. Most people placing these bets are simply gambling, insiders and analysts at least have rational reasons for placing bets and add information to the market.

> Insiders bring information to a market [...] special information they are incentivized to bring

Simultaneously: Insiders have power to coerce an outcome, the market creates a corrupt payoff for them to abuse that power.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#486

Post by eloisant » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #326

chimeracoder wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the most Degenerate form of gambling out there. There is no skill, no human factor, no nothing. Just pure random numbers. While I wouldn't use the word "degenerate", in terms of gambling, this isn't anywhere close to as bad as it gets. At least this form is (psuedo)random, and the odds are statistically fair and published (by law). Contrast to slot machines, which are not random, but are in fact preprogrammed…

Odds of winning are rather meaningless for negative sum games, you’re going to lose anyway. While I find most forms of gambling rather boring, if you like the experience it’s little different than spending 50$ at an arcade. My game of choice is the big state lottery and it’s simply for the fun mental space of the possibility of winning, actually checking your ticket is kind of depressing because the odds are so low.…

Unless you do insider trading, which can be pretty easy on prediction markets depending on your job...

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#487

Post by temp84858696945 » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #357

Retric wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odds of winning are rather meaningless for negative sum games, you’re going to lose anyway. While I find most forms of gambling rather boring, if you like the experience it’s little different than spending 50$ at an arcade. My game of choice is the big state lottery and it’s simply for the fun mental space of the possibility of winning, actually checking your ticket is kind of depressing because the odds are so low.…

I have one friend who likes to gamble. I've tried the old math argument with him and he dismisses it out-of-hand. He says that, yes, he knows it's a negative sum game but sometimes he wins and that makes it worth it. Then he says, "You spend money on a symphony or an art museum or an expensive restaurant, right? Those are guaranteed to leave you a little bit poorer at the end of the night. Same thing as gambling, but…

The response is probably that gambling is designed to be as addictive as possible, and while your friend might think they will not get addicted, is it really a good risk to take?

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#488

Post by poontunia » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#489

Post by gzread » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #468

creatonez wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have lost your respect for the "rationalist" "community" a long time ago. They are aggressively wrong about everything, and most of them are eugenicists.

They were right about Bitcoin getting big (though I'm not aware of anyone putting their money where their mouth was), and they were a decent source of information leading up to the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (which probably saved a handful of lives). Just because they're almost always aggressively wrong, that doesn't mean they're aggressively wrong about everything .

It does mean you probably shouldn't listen to them, because the expected value of listening to them is negative.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#490

Post by Terr_ » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

akudha wrote: post #393

Waterluvian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or…

if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or the accompanying morals I am curious - how do you even begin to police such a thing like polymarket? Wouldn't it take enormous resources to do it? Is it even worth it at that scale? They let you bet on anything and everything, right? I had fun betting $5 here and there Maybe this is the solution - don't let people bet more than $5. That is small enough for…

You mean, turn it into a fun minor hobby-time of sharing popular-opinions that are mostly weighted by how common they are, rather than dangling a huge perverse-incentive in front of an insider so that they reveal (or cause) a strong outcome through greed?

Actually, there's another perverse incentive operating on a higher level, when it comes for the people running things: "How is my prediction-market startup supposed to IPO for a bajillion dollars if we're not first-in-line for having sometimes-corrupt insider data? Nobody's going to pay me that much for a company that's just a spicier form of polling."