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Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

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Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#341

Post by elar_verole »

eru wrote: post #305
elar_verole wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are underappreciating how "manipulation of poly market odds" can be destructive when you are betting on geopolitics. Here this means that every decision is now a conflict of interest, and that doing the unpredictable (politically, economically etc) has a financial incentive for potential insiders. Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

How is that any different from existing financial markets?

Heavy regulation, harder to anonymize, and overall less person exposed to insider info because you can bet on only a subset of stuff, and not everything that can ever happen. Mind you, I still think these existing financial markets do have a ton of issues of this kind (trump's tariff to manipulate the market is a very recent example), but why add more on top of it ?

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#342

Post by arter45 »

Game fixing is a known crime in many jurisdictions. If you are a football/baseball/soccer player and you bet your team will lose, you have an obvious way to drastically increase your odds (especially if you are a top player) - playing bad. Other people are completely unaware of this deal.

Having fire insurance and burning your car is in most jurisdictions illegal. Yes, you should be paid if your car is burned, but if you do it intentionally, you are obviously increasing the chances of getting paid, unless of course the insurance company finds out you did it. And so on.

I don't see why these situations would be illegal and, say, betting against the survival of a regime when you're actually working against it, would be legal.

Things are even harder if you coordinate multiple people. For example, let's say 100 people bet that there will be a riot in town X by the end of the year. X is normally a quiet town so most people bet against. These 100 people bet this will happen 10 minutes before actually starting a riot themselves. Yes, someone could observe last minute trends and might predict reality, but last minute or huge bets are not necessarily true - someone could bet on random things for a variety of reasons. So it's not even useful as a way to get insights into the reality.

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#343

Post by jedimastert »

entropyneur wrote: post #285
thecupisblue wrote: post #280

Not just America, everything is. With stock market, at least we can somehow stop the bad actors, insider traders, corporate manipulation, pumps and dumps - with prediction markets, there is no way. With prediction markets? Next to impossible. The markets being tied to crypto makes it even worse - things get harder to track, jurisdictions get blurry, proving becomes a ping pong between bureaucracy. And proving somethi…

Stock market integrity is important because of their function in the economy. Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society.

First of all, anyone getting scammed is detrimental to society because society is made out of people and those are people getting scammed. Gambling addicts are not less important than wealthy people.

Second, these markets are generating new gambling addicts, which is wildly and provably detrimental to society.

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#344

Post by Hammershaft »

gizzlon wrote: post #216
StrayTint wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Jesus market is really a bet on interest rates. You should bet that Jesus will return if interest rates are >3% because "No" holders will sell to put their money in the bank instead.

You are probably right, but I believe it's a failure of prediction whatever the reason is.

It is, but it's a well known systemic error that has to do with the rate of return from certain accuracy improving predictions falling below the rate of return of anything else.

You can learn a lot more about whether these markets are accurate at this great resource:

https://calibration.city/introduction

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#345

Post by Hammershaft »

fnands wrote: post #298
botacode wrote: post #289

I am broadly in favor of the existence of prediction markets. They are powerful tools for forecasting complex events that can help enrich and empower folks from across a range of backgrounds. The article has two core points, but fails to go deep enough in addressing either. This leads to a _somewhat_ incorrect scapegoating of prediction markets rather than acknowledging head on some more core issues with the state of…

> They are powerful tools for forecasting complex events that can help enrich and empower folks from across a range of backgrounds. gross. This sounds like a press release. It's gambling dressed-up as forecasting.

It might be gambling for some, but prediction markets are impressively accurate, in a way that I think merits OPs comment that the information they produce can improve lives. (Other lives will surely be destroyed by gambling...)

There's quite a bit of interesting research done on the accuracy, here's a great resource:

https://calibration.city/introduction

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#346

Post by throwaway173738 »

bsder wrote: post #303
entropyneur wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock market integrity is important because of their function in the economy. Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society.

> Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society. I used to believe that. With the legalization of all the sports betting and how fast it can drain a gambler which can then affect the gambler's family, I'm now pretty much on the other side of the fence. Just like we banned public smoking because of the effects of secondhand smoke, I'm pretty convinced that the secondary effects of gambling mean…

The sports betting sites even have account managers who are tasked with keeping people on the sites even after the user has decided to quit. It’s so lucrative they can afford to pay people to sit and text gambling addicts.

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#347

Post by snapcaster »

_heimdall wrote: post #333
anonymous908213 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the takes I've ever read. There is a reason gambling is so tightly regulated worldwide, and it's certainly not because governments hate easy vice tax revenue. Gambling debt destroys family units, increases poverty rates (most notably for the children of gambling addicts -- the consequences are not localised only to the person making the bad decisions), and increases violent crime rates. Gambling is mas…

Do you know of any studies that can accurately show the correlation between gambling and societal costs? On the surface the link makes sense to me and seems like it should be right, though I'm not sure how we could have tested it in a controlled way to really know the link exists.

This is such a weird question, just go outside and interact with humans and the evidence is everywhere

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#348

Post by jstanley »

nkrisc wrote: post #322
entropyneur wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock market integrity is important because of their function in the economy. Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society.

The gambling industry itself is a net drain on society. What is the societal benefit provided by it?

Some people want to gamble and the gambling industry provides what they want.

How would you like it if people who didn't care about your hobby started questioning the social benefit of allowing you to do it?

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#349

Post by BoxFour »

_heimdall wrote: post #333
anonymous908213 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the takes I've ever read. There is a reason gambling is so tightly regulated worldwide, and it's certainly not because governments hate easy vice tax revenue. Gambling debt destroys family units, increases poverty rates (most notably for the children of gambling addicts -- the consequences are not localised only to the person making the bad decisions), and increases violent crime rates. Gambling is mas…

Do you know of any studies that can accurately show the correlation between gambling and societal costs? On the surface the link makes sense to me and seems like it should be right, though I'm not sure how we could have tested it in a controlled way to really know the link exists.

There are a bunch of studies out there [0][1] (two I found immediately) showing the risks around problem gambling, but like with most vices people who’ve already picked the pro side tend to react in the same predictable ways (myself included):

1) Dismissal: Feigning or having a profound misunderstanding of how statistics work by poking at the methodology like “N=200? That’s meaningless.”

2) Apathy: “So what if some people get addicted? We can’t babysit everyone.”

3) Rationalization: “Yeah but it helps Native American reservations, so...”

4) Downplaying: "Ok problem gambling is bad, but how prevalent is problem gambling really?"

0: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1989-05439-001

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32402593/

Re: Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling

#350

Post by nkrisc »

jstanley wrote: post #348
nkrisc wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gambling industry itself is a net drain on society. What is the societal benefit provided by it?

Some people want to gamble and the gambling industry provides what they want. How would you like it if people who didn't care about your hobby started questioning the social benefit of allowing you to do it?

> How would you like it if people who didn't care about your hobby started questioning the social benefit of allowing you to do it?

In this hypothetical scenario, is my hobby actively harmful to society?

Some people would enjoy killing people but we don’t let them do that.

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