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Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

timesofisrael.com

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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#281

Post by sebzim4500 »

zbentley wrote: post #62
gcr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B-b-but futarchy and unbiased decisionmaking means well-calibrated markets could be a net good for society!! /hj

Yeah, that claim was always ludicrous to me too. Wisdom-of-crowds isn’t an unbiased decision making strategy, it’s quite biased. Crowd-wisdom works best as a limiter on the bias of other decision making strategies—this is why democracies use representatives rather than direct votes for most decisions. And polymarket isn’t even the wisdom of crowds lol. At its greatest possible adoption it’s still the wisdom of intern…

If you believe Polymarket odds are wrong in a systematic way then you are free to make a lot of money out of it. Unlike the stock market, where "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", any such irrationality will become irrelevant at settlement time.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#283

Post by bspammer »

fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

Just to play devil’s advocate, I have found prediction markets genuinely useful despite never placing a bet.

In 2024 all of my social media feed was convinced the US election was going to go the other way. I have left wing politics and accordingly the algorithm wraps me in a bubble. It was all videos of empty trump rallies and Kamala hype. Polymarket was the main counter signal I had that the election wasn’t going to go the way I hoped.

Similarly when the room temperature super-conductor hype was happening in 2023, the prediction market for it being real never went above 25%. It’s extremely useful to be able to look at that as a layman and go “ok this probably isn’t real”.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#285

Post by DrProtic »

varjag wrote: post #134
defly wrote: post #21

FYI: In November, an ISW Analyst Manipulated the Situation in Myrnohrad to Rig Map Bets https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-ma...

(as reported by Quincy Institute, a thoroughly pro-Russian think tank)

And ISW is tied to Victoria Nuland.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#286

Post by tombert »

fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

I've hated the idea of Polymarket for about as long as I've known about it.

It's one thing when people are betting on how long a speech will be or something, but I really hate the idea of gambling over things that involve the death of people. Things like missile strikes and regime changes involve the deaths of humans and it seems pretty gross to make a game out of that.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#287

Post by tomtomtom777 »

cannonpr wrote: post #66
fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

It can look bad, but this is just an aspect of human behavior en masse that we don’t normally get to see. A long time ago there was an incident on a military base. A man had gotten up on a building to commit suicide, and while the officers tried to convince him not to jump, the drafted soldiers gathered underneath and started chanting “jump, jump” because of a rule that said witnessing the suicide of a fellow soldier…

I think that's horribly fatalistic perspective.

Yes, humans can be bad. But humans can change. Let's not start accepting bad stuff as not so bad, simply because it is "just human behavior".

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#288

Post by boelboel »

cael450 wrote: post #182
markus_zhang wrote: post #16

The gambling market is really bringing out the worst of us.

I feel like America is re-learning why gambling was so widely outlawed. It just ruins everything it touches. At least casinos are mostly contained. I'm tired of seeing gambling ads on every sport and hearing the news talk about prediction markets. Not to mention, they all prey on people. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and people would come in regularly and drop everything they had on scratch-offs. And…

Many people just think certain things in history were outlawed because of 'stupid religious people'. Most of the time there's genuine reasons for banning things even if they weren't perfect or brought other harms with them. Something like usury was banned in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and it wasn't because people prior to 1900 were imbeciles, these things can cause immense instability.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#289

Post by hnfong »

Bender wrote: post #160
fzil wrote: post #3

Man the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.

I ⤻ predict ⤺ that prediction markets will be more tightly regulated or entirely outlawed at some point. i.e. CFTC loses jurisdiction. - More tightly regulated if governments and NGO's can use it to make money, control people and/or narratives, get taxes similar to how casino's are taxed by removing CFTC jurisdiction. - Outlawed if they can not find a way to do any of that.

What do you mean outlawed? It will simply just happen in a jurisdiction that does not care about it.

If they can't find a way to tax it, they won't find a way to cost-efficiently identify people participating in it.

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