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We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

derekthompson.org

121–130 of 741 posts

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#122

If you wager in a prediction market, isn't it expected that there will be some insider trading or thrown results? Because there are clearly people who know when and where bombs will land, and financial incentive to throw results. Thus it makes sense to not participate at all, unless YOU are the one doing the cheating.

Prediction markets are just inside traders profiting off gambling addicts. If you are not an inside trader, you're the loser paying out.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#123

'Predictions' market is the silliest loophole for gambling. Honestly, more surprised Fanduel, DraftKings and the like who have spent millions on lobbying and buying licenses, are not fighting tooth and nail on this.

Actually, prediction markets are closer to stock markets (insofar as you consider stock trading to be gambling). Insider trading is the bigger issue

I've heard people say this but it really only makes sense if you don't think about it for more than 10 or 20 seconds.

Prediction markets by definition always resolve to one side being completely wiped out and losing everything. Stocks going to zero happens pretty seldomly, in prediction markets it's guaranteed to happen every single time.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#125

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired. Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

Morals start and stop somewhere, please don't attack people when they actually show some proper morals on this forum despite the employment of many members here.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#126
post #44
post #17

Just game-theoretically, suppose you bet $100 on some disaster. That disaster causes $10,000,000 of harm, but only causes you $90 of harm individually. You've gained $10, but your $10 gain is a millionth of the harm caused. Generally-speaking, there's an enormous asymmetry between the cost to create/build and the cost to destroy. So now we have a mechanism by which individuals have a financial incentive to cause harm…

Couldn't that be said of stock markets and any markets? United Healthcare stock dropped 10% immediately after its CEO was killed.

Well, there are laws against insider trading.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#127

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired. Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

[flagged]

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#129
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone would need to take the opposite side of that bet. And who would do that knowing someone might try to assassinate him in order to win that bet?

In this scenario, that would be the people paying for the assassination. The people who want it to happen bet that it won't. The people who want to do it bet that it will. The net result is that if one of the people who bet on it happening makes it happen, they are being paid by the people betting against it, in a plausibly deniable way. A country leader seeing someone suddenly take out a $50 million position on them…

I'm not sure there's any deniability in placing the "won't be assassinated" bet, when you could equally state it as "I will pay $1M to whoever accepts this bet and assassinated this person"

Anyways, how exactly is this assassin going to collect on their bet? I'm pretty sure law enforcement will be looking into the fact that somebody place that bet and then shortly after, the assassination happened.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#130
The real power in prediction markets is creating a market for what you want to occur - it's a tangible method to leverage hyperstition.

If you want Polymarket to no longer exist, then simply create a pool for "Polymarket will no longer exist by Jan 1st 2027" on Kalshi, pump the price, and wait for one of these whales to do the job of making it come true for you. When done right, you get the satisfaction of the thing happening, and all of the ROI for entering on the ground floor.

Rinse and repeat and you no longer have to sit by the sidelines and view world events as things that unfold without your input. You can be an active participant in making history the way you want it.

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