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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

#401

Post by loeg »

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.

Kalshi doesn't pay out for demise of a person (though, arguably inconsistently[1]); Polymarket does (probably in violation of US regulation, but there are no rules anymore).

[1]: For example, they did pay out on a bet over whether Jimmy Carter would attend Trump's 2025 inauguration; he didn't, at least in part because he was dead.

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

#402

Post by bilbo0s »

brightball wrote: post #379
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…

Yep, similar thing is happening with college sports. You went from a situation where the intent was for coaches to develop young men, teach them about hard work, overcoming obstacles, getting an education and become a part of an alumni base for the rest of your life. And now it's leaving at the slightest difficulty, constant money dangling to encourage transfers because even if the guy doesn't play for you at least h…

Well, to be fair, in order to complain about no longer being able to "..develop young men, teach them about hard work, overcoming obstacles, getting an education and become a part of an alumni base for the rest of your life.."

we would actually have had to have been delivering on the whole "..develop young men, teach them about hard work, overcoming obstacles, getting an education and become a part of an alumni base for the rest of your life.." story.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of student athletes in money sports, we never really delivered on all of those promises in the past.

These younger generations (GenZ) of student athletes are just wayyy smarter than the older generations of student athletes. Consequently, we can't take advantage the way we did in the past. Even women's volleyball and basketball athletes are choosing to take their money up front, and then transfer because they're pretty sure they won't need the "value" of the "alumni base".

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

#403

Post by MattGaiser »

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.

How is this any more degenerate than slot machines? At least it is truly random, rather than rigged.

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

#404

Post by staticman2 »

Hammershaft wrote: post #205
epolanski wrote: post #9

Prediction markets need to be banned globally ASAP, but it would've helped the article to bring proof of: - the emails - the whatsapp messages - the discord messages - the X messages Mind you, I'm not stating the journalist is lying or overblowing, in fact I suspect this is all more widespread than we think, but it's odd that the journalist puts emphasis on the sources of his information in the case of the missile, y…

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...

Are you talking about the same thing everyone else is?

Imagine the conversation went like this:

A: "Maybe we shouldn't sacrifice 500 virgins to the Aztec God to predict the harvest next hear?"

B "Why not? Killing virgins to predict the harvest are well calibrated (ie accurate).."

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

#405

Post by loeg »

zarathustreal wrote: post #154
varjag wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

(Ad-hominem is not a counter-example btw)

Nothing about GP's comment is ad-hominem; it's neutral, factual context. Unless you dispute the factual claims?

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

#406

Post by xvector »

axus wrote: post #258
xvector wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket's founder is Shayne Coplan, 27-year old "youngest self-made billionaire" (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?) A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.

When power is concentrated to the government, the corruption is concentrated with it. Incarceration and the end of privacy don't restore the victims. A consumer protection bureau could bring a civil suit against Polymarket to pay the journalist.

A lawsuit would just be the "cost of doing business" for Polymarket. Until there is no skin in the game, there will be no change or accountability.

If CISOs can be held criminally liable for data breaches, the rest of C-suite can be held criminally liable for their own decisions as well.

In this case, the guy knowingly operates a betting market that illegally does not require KYC.

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

#407

Post by GuB-42 »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #357
Retric wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I have one friend who likes to gamble. I've tried the old math argument with him and he dismisses it out-of-hand. He says that, yes, he knows it's a negative sum game but sometimes he wins and that makes it worth it. Then he says, "You spend money on a symphony or an art museum or an expensive restaurant, right? Those are guaranteed to leave you a little bit poorer at the end of the night. Same thing as gambling, but…

All people who go to casinos are not pathological gamblers.

They have some disposable income, and spend it at the casino for a bit of fun. Sometimes, they come out richer, and they are happy, sometimes, they lose, they come out a bit disappointed, but that's the cost of of entertainment.

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

#408

Post by bee_rider »

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.…

I don’t play the lottery but I’ve never really understood the math against it. It’s a negative expected value, sure, but it also produces a (small) probability of a high return. The math against it seems to hinge on the idea that people should maximize the expected value of their wealth.

But, an alternative goal is to maximize your probability of qualitative changes up, and minimize the probability of qualitative changes down, for your living conditions. If somebody is in a situation where they can spend a qualitatively inconsequential amount of money on lotteries, then playing the lottery is a rational way of maximizing this metric, right?

Of course, it does add the hard-to-quantify risk that they’ll become addicted to gambling and start spending a qualitatively meaningful amount of money gambling!

OTOH if we as a society all started putting a small percentage of our wealth toward the lottery we’re essentially misallocating whatever that percentage was. So it produces a somehow less efficient economy I guess. So maybe there’s a social bias against it.

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

#409

Post by culi »

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)

Quincy Institute is not tied to Russia and condemns the invasion

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

#410

Post by pasquinelli »

MattGaiser wrote: post #403
Balgair wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. How is this any more degenerate than slot machines? At least it is truly random, rather than rigged.

slot machines are truly random. the rigging is in the pay table.
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