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'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

telegraph.co.uk

231–240 of 270 posts

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few years years ago, there was no conceivable profit motive for interfering with weather sensors on public property. I have bad news for you. The manipulation of weather sensors for profit has a history that long pre-dates prediction markets. You just weren't paying attention until now.

> The manipulation of weather sensors for profit has a history that long pre-dates prediction markets. Okay, I'm intrigued about what I've missed. Give me more information about this history, please.

Example, some countries have laws about operating factories or construction sites in when the outside temperature is too high. So they have artificial underreported those for decades.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your argument is that people had no existing profit motive to use dirty tricks to influence scientific results/data? No, that's way too broad. I don't believe that , and I didn't write that . Oil companies indeed had enormous incentives to obscure and confuse the scientific record of climate change. But hiring thousands of Taskrabbits to go around the world blowing hot and/or cold air on weather sensors would not h…

> some of them would have been caught, and it would've been exposed as a hamfisted and shambolic scandal. Isn't that the same thing that happened here? It's a news story because they got caught. There is apparently already a law against this sort of tampering and it makes sense to have that law. > Now, because of prediction markets, the "attack surface" for interfering with scientific data collection is much larger a…

It's now that poorer, less powerful, were caught. I'm sure it's been caught before, but buried.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#233
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend for you to read Feyerabend's Science in a Free Society .

I'm not sure I see the relevance?

Yours is a rather pedestrian dorm-room take on epistemology and relevance of the moral dimension to social progress whose flaws are addressed in longform by Feyerabend.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#234

> There are no indications so far that the successful punters have had to return their winnings. However, the data source for Paris’s hottest temperature has since moved to a sensor at the smaller Paris-Le Bourget airport. Here's the negative externality that no one will care about. There's no reason gamblers won't repeat this stunt, until us poor schmucks who just want an accurate temperature reading have to build a…

I got an ecowitt on a pole in my backyard. I should be safe for awhile.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The manipulation of weather sensors for profit has a history that long pre-dates prediction markets. Okay, I'm intrigued about what I've missed. Give me more information about this history, please.

Example, some countries have laws about operating factories or construction sites in when the outside temperature is too high. So they have artificial underreported those for decades.

Yeah, I'm aware of warehouses that underreport their interior temperatures so that they don't have to give their employees adequate ventilation and breaks. Amazon in particular.

It's really bad, but it's not quite the same society-pervading incentive for data manipulation.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#236

Betting against what is widely considered as “expected”, “reasonable” is such a major source of profit when one can influence the income. Whether it’s a temperature sensor one can breathe on or movement of troops one can control or influence[0], the idea is the same—except in one of the above you can add “death and suffering” in addition to some unfortunate gamblers losing their money. A depressing thought: it will o…

I don't mean to detract from your point, but regarding your footnote, you seemingly have. Unless it is in your writing style to make direct asides about how one may infer your message was procured.

Fair point, though it’s isolated to a footnote.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#237
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been quite successful trading weather prediction markets. The prediction markets were never about predicting outcomes. If that's the level you are playing on, you're playing at the lowest possible level, and probably won't win. The markets are now about properly modelling other peoples' manipulation of prediction. That's how Wall Street works as well. Companies can beat earnings and their stocks crash immediatel…

Says "prediction markets were never about predicting outcomes", writes long winded tripe stating that "prediction markets exactly about predicting outcomes". Thank you Tai Lopez.

Here in my groj...

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#238
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why almost certainly? It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second.

The payout is much higher if you make an unlikely thing happen. "Unlikely things" in politics & warfare are probably highly correlated with irrational or irresponsible decisions.

If you're in a decision-making position you have lots of events passing by. Your limits are in trying not to get caught, not in searching for the biggest ratios for single bets.

Also there's plenty of things that are unlikely because they're specific, not because they're irrational. Things happening in specific date ranges are an easy one.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#239
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see the relevance?

Yours is a rather pedestrian dorm-room take on epistemology and relevance of the moral dimension to social progress whose flaws are addressed in longform by Feyerabend.

What a bizarre response.

I was relaying the technical details of working in these data environments based on deep, real-world operational experience in the domain. There is no "moral dimension" to it, I was describing the world as it exists.

Does Feyerabend also have an opinion on compiler flags and sorting algorithms?

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#240
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't trust your measurements, and you shouldn't because all physical world measurements are proxies, the alternative is to find several unrelated and redundant proxies for "ground truth" and have them corroborate and correct each other. There is a lot of errors, bugs, noise, idiosyncratic behavior, etc degrading the data even ignoring intentional manipulation so you really should be doing this anyway. Stitchi…

I recommend for you to read Feyerabend's Science in a Free Society .

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