All this fearmongering about decision markets lately is really annoying. If you don't like gambling — just don't gamble and shut the fuck up. It's not for you to decide if gambling is good or bad for me. If I am stupid enough to bet anything on an outcome that clearly depends on a person who could, potentially, be betting as well — it's my problem, not yours.
We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
291–300 of 741 posts
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#292The problem is that these markets allow to translate political power directly to money. Worse destructive events are rare, need a lot less action (butterfly effect) and leave thus less traces and command high odds. Once committed the ones in power have a vested interest in causing destruction.
Capitalism took care of the exchange between money and power long ago. Prediction markets, as terrible as they are, are peanuts in comparison.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#293The entire country seems built on taking advantage of people, from my vantage point right now. Whether it’s attention, drugs, or business/legal leverage, everyone is out for advantage and they’re not even pretending to care about people they affect.
If this is referring to the US, yes indeed. We're great at the whole free market, fiduciary duty to shareholder bit. We're terrible at using law to manage the negative externalities.
I have bad news, I don't think we're that great at the free market either.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re the financial equivalent of recreational drugs. Not everyone gets addicted, but many do. Harms your own health/assets. Can destroy lives. Has spillover effects into general society. The libertarian/authoritarian argument is much the same.
Gambling is the only vice where the store doesn't close. Even the prostitutes go to sleep for a while. But you can drive to the casino and gamble it all away anytime.
It’s even worse on the phone.. there’s a running gag on IG with a lot of truth about “you might be at the bar with your friends at 12am but I’m locked in on German object splitting in half / other obscure betable ‘sports’“. It’s insane we let people do this to themselves and their families.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is weather prediction markets Humans can, and do, manipulate the weather. There's actually international treaties against doing it. > Hundreds are creating their own weather prediction models Weather is chaotic. You don't run a model once and use the result. You run it hundreds of times and average the results. You also need really high quality real time data to be fed into the system to achieve any sort of accurac…
> Why do we need a third party gambling apparatus involved? Wisdom of crowds > wisdom of individual firms, also a market solution actually would work in this case imo. Manipulating the weather seems easy enough to detect and much more expensive than any benefit you'd get, and there aren't really any negative externalities.
> Wisdom of crowds > wisdom of individual firms
I doubt the utility of this simple aphorism. Primarily "the crowd" has a strong bias and would only consist of people willing to take the time to put a financial stake on their position.
> Manipulating the weather seems easy enough to detect
What are you basing this off of?
> and much more expensive than any benefit you'd get
Cloud seeding is not particularly expensive. The problem is the people performing this work may never interact with your market. You're literally playing a rigged game without any clue.
> and there aren't really any negative externalities.
The folly of man in a single sentence.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#296Here's an alleged secondary effect of 2 in a quote by Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan[1]: “When I get hit up by people in the Middle East who are saying, ‘Hey, we’re looking at Polymarket to decide whether we sleep near the bomb shelter; we look at it every day’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s really that popular over there?’” he added. “That’s very powerful. That’s an undeniable value proposition that did not exist before.…
I think the other side of the argument goes that (a) the bombings would happen anyway, and (b) bombing is very expensive so nobody actually profits from the insider trading. (The bombs "only" get marginally cheaper.) Thus the only actual effect is the early warning, which is a good thing in this case.
Like if someone managed to figure out a way to make slightly cheaper bombs but with the tradeoff that the cheaper bombs gave a few hours of eary warning to the people being bombed, I think I would prefer you used those bombs.
(There are many other cases where insiders may change the outcome to align with their bet. That is bad if the outcome is bad.)
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#297If 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.
> Thus it makes sense to not participate at all, unless YOU are the one doing the cheating.
Um, exactly?
You don't have a legal system to hold the companies accountable for any payout. You don't have published odds with a regulator ensuring those odds are enforced. You have zero transparency whatsoever. You have systems where if you start winning, they will effectively cut you off.
Everything about online betting screams "SCAM!" from the rooftops. Everything about online betting has always screamed "SCAM!" from the rooftops.
What part of this aren't people getting? The house always wins.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> said the low of the day was 17 People are gambling on the "low of the day?" Might as well make back alley chicken fighting legal.
I'm not going to lie, it started as a fun thing to do on a boring and cold Saturday night after a snow storm, I was looking at weather underground map of stations around central park praying it would drop a few degrees and I'd make 4:1 on my bet. I learned a lot about weather stations in the next few weeks and it was cool looking the historical data from the Central Park weather station (I think the longest running i…
> if the people involved are responsible and having fun.
I think "please gamble responsibly" has the same power as "please drink responsibly." Which is to say, we regulate the ever loving hell out of alcohol sales, and that's probably where gambling should be headed as well.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#299These prediction markets shouldn't be allowed for situations where humans can control the outcome. They do have their place however - one I find particularly interesting is weather prediction markets, primary because they end up having a net benefit. Hundreds are creating their own weather prediction models and are duking it out. Over time these models get better, and the rest of us benefit. I think these markets cou…
Or you could just fund the NOAA instead of making up reasons for more markets.
Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
#300'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.
I prefer prediction markets to gambling because the platform isn't the bookmaker. This reduces the adverse selection of players. For instance, if you actually win regularly on these platforms they'll actually ban you, much like a casino. My understanding of prediction markets is that it's pure market making which is preferable
In theory this should limit the damage insiders can do, since as the probability of encountering an insider rises the market makers will need to widen the spread.