461–470 of 559 posts
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well I see more problematic the people actually doing the Iran attacks and murder of heads of state. Betting on those is distasteful, but doing those things is where the damage lies.
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I mean, yeah, pretty much.
I can actually consistently make money in the stock market, not so in a casino.
If you regularly trade and constantly watch your stocks, then it's a casino.
If you buy some index funds and never look at them again until 10 years later, it's not a casino.
There's no clear delineation between an investment and a bet; it's a Venn diagram with a huge overlap. I don't think that means that there is any question about where on the Venn diagram sites like Kalshi and Polymarket belong.
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Very close already. Death threats went to this journalist; seems someone bet on missile hits. https://factkeepers.com/polymarket-gamblers-vow-to-kill-jour... It also incentivizes leaks from insiders, sometimes endangering others. A soldier was charged for betting on a military operation. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-soldier-charged-using-clas... And of course throwing pro sports, but that's been happening for ag…
Throwing in pro sports is at least harmless for people who don't care about pro sports.
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The utility is a fairly robust signal about the probability of certain events occurring. It's pretty helpful for grounding your beliefs about the world (in certain domains). For example, I had a lot of people ask me about the Hantavirus and if it was worth worrying about. I didn't have to do any research other than look at the various prediction markets and see them all at 5-10% to determine it was probably a nothing…
Even for that function, I think their benefits are overrated. Someone could easily manipulate that number if it fits their purposes (ie a health tech startup trying to peddle some cure). The numbers given to you are an illusion of understanding that does not replace actual research.
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>Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting La Quiniela, a lottery based on soccer matches' results. Every middle aged man filled some weekly forms (win for locals/draw/win for foreigners) as if it was a religion. If you matched 14 from 15 results (much better with 15), you could get a big prize. Also, Jai Alai matches on the North of Spain had huge bets on results too. Younge…
In practice La Quiniela works more like a lottery than betting, though. No immediacy, no lights and sounds, no adrenalin rush. I don't think there's much risk of people falling into severe addiction by playing that.
I've played a couple of times solo and in group but never sticked to me.
No related to the point, but what it did stick to me for one season was La Liga Fantástica from Marca ( a fantasy league on paper) when I was a child, because it had the data component, you had a budget to pick players etc, This was before we had internet broadly, if I remember correctly the paper would publish huge lists with the teams ranking or the players stats. But what I do remember was some of my best players like Zalazar :D
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Even for that function, I think their benefits are overrated. Someone could easily manipulate that number if it fits their purposes (ie a health tech startup trying to peddle some cure). The numbers given to you are an illusion of understanding that does not replace actual research.
I don't think it's as easy to manipulate as you say.
In this specific case it's clear that the market doesn't represent our collective knowledge about hantavirus at all. Twenty days ago the odds of a hantavirus pandemic being declared by the WHO were ~10% and now it's 5%. This is just a reflection of the news cycle, it would be nuts to say that this is a reliable estimate for the underlying scientific facts.
These - especially Polymarket - should be illegal globally, as they incentivize people with power to manipulate the real world in horribly destructive ways to win a bet. I would not be surprised if people are murdered at some point to reap the payout of some related bet.
I would have expected it to be illegal in the U.S by now but we live in a strange reality where the current administration's family is literally profiting off of it.
Legislation by who is willing to "donate" the most; law of the jungle capitalism.
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"Least destructive"? I can't access many sites and services during matches, but my colleagues tell me their pirate sources have barely been affected. This "least destructive" path is not working but is definitely destroying.
Ok, besides avoiding the blocks altogether, you seem to know of a less destructive approach, please do share it, I'll share whatever you come up with to my representative as I've managed to have a dialogue about this with them before. But it has to be something , and cannot be "Don't do the blocks" obviously since it's already ruled it should be blocked, but since you've managed to come up with a block so it doesn't…
> But it has to be something
I think you're falling for the politician's syllogism. Pressure to do "something" doesn't mean we should do anything, specially if this "something" has already proven worse than even doing nothing.
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> It's easier to stop incentivizing people to ruin the commons It's impossible. No matter how good of a job you do, there will _always_ be people out to watch it all burn.
When underlying problems are left untreated the number of unreasonable responses increases as a symptom of that. For sure, you'll always have that tiny minority who are just misanthropes. But a lot of the people who end up causing destruction do so because there's some problem affecting them that's not being dealt with. The modern world incentivizes creating underlying problems because not only can you profit from th…
I think solving the socioeconomic, geopolitical, and religious tensions that lead to plane hijackings is a much harder problem to solve than simply putting doors on cockpits and forcing people to do body scans.
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We ended up with locked cockpits that the pilots won't open for anybody, plus passengers willing to fight back due to the tragedy of the terrorists. We ended up with the TSA because Karen needed security theatre and the government was all too happy to increase the funding and scope of DHS with the nod of the useful idiots.
And the locked cockpits have been indirectly responsible for a huge number of deaths. Best intentions and all that
Have there been multiple separate incidents?
The other side of the coin is that hijackings used to be a frequent and regular occurrence. Now they're not anymore.