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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

#301

Post by mapt »

Balgair wrote: post #212
Waterluvian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or…

Friend of a friend does announcing online. Like, you pay him a little ( So, he got a gig to announce the opening of loot boxes at some show. I think it was Fortnite loot boxes. I guess it gives you the total value of the loot box spree you opened. So, 2 people buy a bunch of loot boxes, then open them up, then whoever has the higher value wins and takes both of the people's total haul. Sounds like a strange thing to…

> It is the most Degenerate form of gambling out there. There is no skill, no human factor, no nothing. Just pure random numbers.

Never go to Nevada.

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

#302

Post by fnands »

Hammershaft wrote: post #194
fnands wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least cryptocurrencies had some nice ideas behind them. Just sad they almost immediately got co-opted by swindlers and criminals.

Prediction markets also have very interesting ideas. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

> 12 hour ahead prediction

As the comments on that article rightfully point out, restricting the data analysed to 12 hours before the resolution feels like cherry picking.

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

#303

Post by Hammershaft »

leshenka wrote: post #264
Hammershaft wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Prediction markets have value for people as a source of reliable information because they tend to be very accurate compared to any other human mechanism for creating forecasts. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

I wouldn't be able to say this with a straight face after reading this article.

Why? We have years of experimental evidence that these prediction markets are well calibrated (ie accurate).

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

#304

Post by echelon_musk »

dboreham wrote: post #260
empath75 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a fun historical fact is that insurance markets started with people in coffee houses betting on whether or not ships would sink for fun. Eventually ship owners realized that if they bet on their own ship sinking, that it reduced the financial risk of travel, then betters realized that ship owners were doing that and decided to research before taking the other side of the bet, and so on until you end up with ship…

Yes but if you're a bloke toking on your pipe in Lloyds Coffee House in 1713 you don't know that you already ordered a submarine to sink a ship you're placing a bet will sink...

Submarines in 1713?

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

#305

Post by bagacrap »

OutOfHere wrote: post #292
alkonaut wrote: post #290

So Polymarket would settle the bet based on reporting from a single source? That seems to be very open to manipulation. In fact, for something as inconsequential as this, I'd just bet heavily myself if I were the reporter.

There exists a sensible way to handle this. It is to require at least three independent news outlet reports of an event (as defined in the bet). A related issue is that war news is heavily censored in Israel; it's difficult for news outlets to report it.

Or y'know, ban this betting activity to begin with.

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

#306

Post by kibwen »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #118
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.

Absolutely horrifying. Today they are bribing journalists to report on a bomb. Tomorrow they will be bribing armies to bomb. This needs to be banned.

Make a bet for "$PUBLIC_FIGURE will be dead by $DATE" and see how quickly people realize that this is just a distributed assassination contract.

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

#307

Post by evklein »

I'm imagining something probably horrible and fascinating at the same time:

You could almost imagine world events being "democratized" by these markets at this point - a significant event will happen (or not happen) by the grace of who is betting on what outcomes and how much volume is at stake. If you subscribe to the view of human history as being staked to material outcomes, then at some point the PolyMarket betting volume becomes an important variable. Betting volume on an event may subsume the actual material interests.

A terse example: two rival kingdoms exist, and it is generally known that kingdom A wants to annex a sliver of the other's fertile interfluve. General consensus is that this will someday happen. Now introduce PolyMarket, what happens? You have people in both kingdoms (and the rest of the world) betting on when/if it will happen. At some point, maybe the betting skews more towards the annexation never happening, and the volume continues to rise as the scales are more tipped. At some point then kingdom A has to contend with the massive amount of value they will subsequently create or destroy if they choose to pursue annexation. Individual actors within the working bureacracy of kingdom A will inevitably use the privileged information at their power to enrich themselves via the market, further tilting or manipulating things in one direction.

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

#309

Post by bagacrap »

pindab0ter wrote: post #210

I think time and time again that incentives are most important in determining how a market and by extension a society behaves. These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. These markets allow you to bet on when the invasion of a foreign country or the demise of a person happens. There comes a point where one bets against someone to die and you will see themselves incentivized to make that happ…

Technically you can't bet on the demise of a person, at least in the US, as participants recently discovered when the previous supreme leader of Iran was killed and their "leadership change" bet did not pay out.

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

#310

Post by Hammershaft »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #273
Hammershaft wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prediction markets also have very interesting ideas. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...

The source is a company that works with Polymarket and sells Polymarket data (as well as Kalshi and other gambling platforms).

The findings are consistent with academic research that these markets are well calibrated.
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