Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

War prediction markets are a national-security threat

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 162 posts

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#141

Post by mullingitover »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #140
mullingitover wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US claim is that their attack is a sort of pre-emptive self-defense because Israel forced their hand. That’s what I’m calling a lie: Israel could’ve been dissuaded, trivially , if the US didn’t want to start a war with Iran.

Their hand was forced, and it was "a sort of pre-emptive self-defense". I'm still not seeing the lie. You think they should have done something different, but "should have done something different" is a completely different criticism. And what you think is "trivial" is far from certain.

> I'm still not seeing the lie

It’s an absolute howler that the United States would be led around by the nose by a country smaller than New Jersey. C’mon, man. You honestly believe that the massive military buildup that preceded this was just a wild coincidence?

If the Israelis were actually pushing the US around in the way we’re supposed to believe in this story the US would absolutely ruin them in a heartbeat. Netanyahu would be in prison in a timeframe measured in hours.

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#143

Post by Dylan16807 »

mullingitover wrote: post #141
Dylan16807 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their hand was forced, and it was "a sort of pre-emptive self-defense". I'm still not seeing the lie. You think they should have done something different, but "should have done something different" is a completely different criticism. And what you think is "trivial" is far from certain.

> I'm still not seeing the lie It’s an absolute howler that the United States would be led around by the nose by a country smaller than New Jersey. C’mon, man. You honestly believe that the massive military buildup that preceded this was just a wild coincidence? If the Israelis were actually pushing the US around in the way we’re supposed to believe in this story the US would absolutely ruin them in a heartbeat. Neta…

Pushing the US to make some kind of decision isn't the kind of "pushing around" that would make the US attack Israel. Your ideas of alternate ways for this to play out have gone from weird to absolutely ridiculous.

The US might have already decided it was going to attack, but it just as easily might not have.

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#145

Post by egberts1 »

nradov wrote: post #124
amelius wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world did fine before derivatives. In fact some might say it did even better. And gambling only makes the wealth gap worse. And there is a ton of nasty incentives linked to it.

Nonsense. Derivatives have been actively traded in the USA at least since 1848 (and even earlier in other countries). Nothing was better about the world in 1847.

The Dutch? Early 1500s?

That is what my reading recollection is recalling on 'derivative-like".

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#147

Post by abustamam »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #133
abustamam wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I had to reread that part... I was like, no way the CEO of Polymarket publicly said on record that it incentivizes leaks. Had to check to make sure I wasn't on the onion.

He was talking about companies at that part of the interview, and getting company info leaked to the market is generally a good thing.

Wow, it took some time for me to dig the interview out(0). I think it's stupid that Atlantic did not link to it, and that they misrepresented the context.

I agree that company info being leaked is whatever. No one is hurt by knowing that Apple is working on a foldable phone; maybe an exec loses his million dollar bonus and can't upgrade his yacht this year, and the market can operate off of that knowledge.

But the flip side is that there's no way to distinguish between leaked company info and leaked government info, and up until this era of history, there was rarely financial incentive for anyone to leak govt info, and even if there were, it was almost impossible to do so completely anonymously.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with the article. Who knows if that actually happened? But the incentives make it more plausible than ever.

(0) https://www.youtube.com/live/t647EWQst5A?si=TPNx7RbxWvn9wVdn

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#148

Post by xtiansimon »

Here’s a trivial case I noticed on IG the other day. News host goes to NBC studios to tape his Colbert Late Night Show appearance. After taping was done a friend shares a polymarket on what he will talk about. But of course he had just finished taping the show and it had yet to air.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTv8QzJkmL2/

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#149

Post by Paradigma11 »

abustamam wrote: post #78

For whatever it's worth, Kalshi refused to pay out on the bet because Khomenei died, and they refuse to allow people to profit off of death so they returned everyone's bets. https://xcancel.com/mansourtarek_/status/2029996077554815268 While I think this policy removes one avenue of incentivizing death of real people (many bets involving real people can probably be resolved by some sort of assassination attempt), I ho…

On the other hand this possibly forces people to put their mouth where their money is. It would be great to be able to hold all those politicians and pundits at least financially accountable. Oh,so you say that this spending is not going to be a problem because the economy will grow twice that much. Sooo, how much did you bet on that? And how did your bets go last year.

Re: War prediction markets are a national-security threat

#150

Post by abustamam »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #149
abustamam wrote: post #78

For whatever it's worth, Kalshi refused to pay out on the bet because Khomenei died, and they refuse to allow people to profit off of death so they returned everyone's bets. https://xcancel.com/mansourtarek_/status/2029996077554815268 While I think this policy removes one avenue of incentivizing death of real people (many bets involving real people can probably be resolved by some sort of assassination attempt), I ho…

On the other hand this possibly forces people to put their mouth where their money is. It would be great to be able to hold all those politicians and pundits at least financially accountable. Oh,so you say that this spending is not going to be a problem because the economy will grow twice that much. Sooo, how much did you bet on that? And how did your bets go last year.

That's actually a great idea!
Post reply on HN