411–420 of 517 posts
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I think as this becomes a reality, in general people will stop trading so close near the deadline for so little gain.
As it gets closer to the deadline, the timeframe shortens, so the gain does increase. A 1% return which you're paid on tomorrow is a 3,778% annualized return.
Prediction markets to me are a natural consequence of the post-truth world we live in. For one, it creates insanely imbalanced systems where two sides of a 50/50 market have completely opposite world views that when the market resolves may have access to sources, whether completely fake or misinfo'd, that lead them to believe the market should be settled in their favor. This then puts the prediction market in a place…
Contrary to what you insinuate, we don't have 2 parallel markets for each issue, where each groups bets in their own echo chamber market to feel good about their beliefs. The law of one price holds and we have a single market per event, and it almost always resolves such that >> 50% of people agree with the result retrospectively. The resolution mechanism affects the price. If the market is expected to be biased towards a certain outcome, then that outcome will trade at a higher price.
You could easily prove your theory by giving an example of two markets about the same issue, with different arbiters, where the price significantly diverges. Or where the arbiters disagreed after the fact. There will be examples, but how much Volume traded in those markets, compared to the markets where it didn't happen?
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>What is the societal benefit provided by it? Same as beer or any other drug - just a way to have some fun and not destructive provided you can control yourself. Though, the one time I opened a CSGO gun case and felt the dopamine rush, it was way stronger than any drug I've done. Not that I'm a "highly-experienced individual", but alcohol, weed or adderall don't come close to a CSGO case. Gambling feels much riskier.
Those things should really be illegal too, I think, even as someone who enjoys alcohol. The costs to society due to alcohol and the like are massive for essentially no real benefit. Yes, I know what happened during prohibition. That still doesn’t mean alcohol is good for society.
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In the context of the events talked about the article and events covered by these markets, sports are irrelevant, not a concern, they influence 0 on how these markets should be regulated. Sports might be fixed? People might gamble with sports? I don't give a shit man, these markets bet on democratic elections and war, the concerns are whether military action is effected for money or leaked for money, everything else…
I agree. What I'm saying is that, especially because way less critical applications of this "bet and act to win the bet" rule (sport, insurance,...) are notoriously illegal, I don't see why worse use cases (bet on a military action and lead it) should be ok.
In chess, it's part of the rules that you cannot use a chess engine, a tournament may have a prize money, to enter into a tournament you agree to some clauses like following the rules of chess and not using an engine. It's a contract.
If someone were to use an engine, they would be cheating, and in this context it would be breach of contract, and possibly fraud.
It would be wrong to assume that because using computer programs in this competitive sport, it is therefore wrong to use it in more critical applications, like war, or health or construction. The core reason being because they are by nature very different events with different contracts that are entered into willingly and are controlled by very different laws, but also independent of laws, they are very different phenomenons and will of course have different moral and practical impacts. (Duh)
Prediction markets to me are a natural consequence of the post-truth world we live in. For one, it creates insanely imbalanced systems where two sides of a 50/50 market have completely opposite world views that when the market resolves may have access to sources, whether completely fake or misinfo'd, that lead them to believe the market should be settled in their favor. This then puts the prediction market in a place…
Your criticism applies to any epistemic institution. Prediction markets are far more robust than any epistemic institution that humans have come up with so far. Contrary to what you insinuate, we don't have 2 parallel markets for each issue, where each groups bets in their own echo chamber market to feel good about their beliefs. The law of one price holds and we have a single market per event, and it almost always r…
Even though the market basically settled in 2019 as she missed filing deadlines, a whole group of conspiracy theorists in the "Yes" market descended in the comments, and there was 10-15% on "YES" even til the very last hours they closed the market, which was like a ~week or two before the actual election.
Every news event was interpreted by this group as a "sign" she was secretly running, and they provided their own sources. I was arbitraging this market for the whole year on any "new" hillary news, so paid very close attention to the discussion circles happening around it - I checked in after the market closed and many of the genuine "YES" people putting up as much money as they were able to concluded PredictIt was incorrect and that Hillary was still the "phantom" nominee. It would not at all surprise me if a few of them still believe she actually ran for president. They probably should have closed the market several months before, but they kept it open. If they had closed it at any reasonable point beforehand a huge chunk of the "YES" market would have lost their minds.
People are goofy and prone to conspiratorial thinking. If you want an example of something that there isn't a market for, but just an example of how much 2 groups of people's thinking can diverge - Ask 100 random people what happened to an ICE officer in minnesota that was involved in a shooting very recently.
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…
Maybe a number of some kind?
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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.
This is common practice in gambling and now games, too: Zynga has 'VIP' teams for high-spending free to play game customers, they would talk on the phone at length, get to know them, fly them to Vegas for jaunts, etc. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales... > "We've done so much experimenting at Zynga with VIP. We know what's the frequency of contact. We know what call types work. We know what…
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…
And finally, here it is: The one guy who won the Venezuela bet by being hyperinformed-high-iq-predicting-the-future: https://futurism.com/future-society/polymarket-venezuela-ins...
(btw: you forgot to add AI and blockchain!)
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As a matter of adopting sensible definitions, I think you need to draw the line somewhere between what is gambling and what is not. If the risk taken can, in principle, be shifted in your favour (i.e. to produce positive expectation) through application of skill, then it isn't gambling. For example, in my mind, betting on whether you will win a game of chess is not gambling. On the other hand, if you cannot influence…
I would say that gambling with skill component is still gambling. For example, in blackjack you can limit your losses by following a basic strategy, which is a 2x2 matrix with rows containing the value of your hand and columns containing the open dealer card. If you can obtain an edge through a skill component (card counting in blackjack), some people wouldn't call this gambling anymore, but I would still call it gam…
"real gambling", random game like Roulette
"unreal gambling", game with incomplete information like Poker which allows you to get a better outcome based on skill & experience
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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.