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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

#381

Post by amelius »

bentcorner wrote: post #254
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prediction markets as a useful tool are predicated on insider information. The punters without edge are the bait incentivizing the insiders. And like any other gambling (see 1919 Black Sox), they can also incentivize behavior for actors who can influence the outcome of what’s being gambled upon. Personally, that’s a significant enough negative externality for me to not want to live in a society where “prediction ma…

Makes me wonder if there's a bet you can take on Polymarket that Polymarket will get shut down due to it negatively influencing behavior. The insider trading on that one should get interesting.

Will it pay out if it is shut down though?

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

#382

Post by duxup »

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 wonder if part of the deal is people gambling believe they have insider info, so any story to the contrary to them is clearly a lie costing them money, something that seems extra offensive?

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

#383

Post by evklein »

dbspin wrote: post #312
evklein wrote: post #307

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 betti…

Unfortunately what you're describing is precisely the opposite of the meaning of 'democratised'. A more accurate term would be commoditised. In this case the capacity to manipulate events becomes as tied to wealth as it is to access to information.

Yeah, I really only mean 'democratized' in the sense that there's suddenly a populace of influence. Whether or not that influence is 'fair' in a democratic sense is clearly not the case, but there's a tipping point in how influential it actually is.

If you're an elected lawmaker, and there's a bill on the floor which gives your district $500,000 in hospital funding but there's $10,000,000,000 in volume just on the 'no' side of the bet, how's that going to influence your decision making?

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

#384

Post by ptsneves »

bagacrap wrote: post #309
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.

This is true for Kalshi but not for Polymarket. Also Kalshi voided the bet and it got sued. By the way prediction markets are commodity securities where Matt Levine mentioned it should not allow death contracts. Here we are though..

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

#385

Post by urikaduri »

Retric wrote: post #326
chimeracoder wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the most Degenerate form of gambling out there. There is no skill, no human factor, no nothing. Just pure random numbers. While I wouldn't use the word "degenerate", in terms of gambling, this isn't anywhere close to as bad as it gets. At least this form is (psuedo)random, and the odds are statistically fair and published (by law). Contrast to slot machines, which are not random, but are in fact preprogrammed…

Odds of winning are rather meaningless for negative sum games, you’re going to lose anyway. While I find most forms of gambling rather boring, if you like the experience it’s little different than spending 50$ at an arcade. My game of choice is the big state lottery and it’s simply for the fun mental space of the possibility of winning, actually checking your ticket is kind of depressing because the odds are so low.…

Well, you can win the big state lottery if you really khow what you're doing. But you might need to hide in a remote island if you win too much. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/how-to-win...

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

#388

Post by red_admiral »

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.

They've certainly turned out different than Scott Alexander predicted, once the markets were opened up to people who are not in the wider rationalist community.

Not foreseeing the amount of sports betting that would take place, is kind of a failure of rationality in the first place, and I say this as someone who absolutely respects the community in general.

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

kibwen wrote: post #306
tomtomtom777 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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