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We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

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Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#471

Post by willturman »

bombcar wrote: post #446
willturman wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to take a course on the Economics of Gaming from William Eadington [1] , who was the founder of Gambling Studies. Our final in 2008 consisted of two parts: predicting the electoral outcome of the Presidential election of each state where each state represented one percentage of our grade, and then a wager from 1-50 percentage points on whether the stock ma…

>Our final in 2008 consisted of two parts: predicting the electoral outcome of the Presidential election of each state where each state represented one percentage of our grade, and then a wager from 1-50 percentage points on whether the stock market would rise or fall the day after the election. Explain this more? Let's assume you're Nate Silver and predict the 50 state outcome perfectly - you have a 50% in the class…

It was exactly a game theory question, and a perfect exercise in real world betting markets. You’ll never have the most information and you’ll never be the biggest fish.

I learned the lesson that day, and I’d argue that even Obama with 365 electoral votes and control of the legislature learned it soon afterwards. Being a naïve hopeful Obama supporter, I bet 50 points on up and lost my ass.

Nate Silver came into the national spotlight after his analysis that year. There were other polling prediction models out of Princeton, but I heavily relied on Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight. I remember predicting every state correctly except North Carolina.

Interestingly in the context of this post, the University of Iowa has been hosting a market for real monetary binary options on US political outcomes for 30 years now. [1] It’s probably some small stakes fun for Midwest market makers looking for some action during off season corn futures.

Other things we learned: - The players club at Harrah’s marked the beginning of the rewards points programs available at nearly every single seller of goods today. - Casinos, in cracking down on card sharp teams playing blackjack with a mathematical edge and who had been 86’d but often returned in disguise, developed software to identify people from security camera footage by their stride. This was in 2008. - Bet the pass line, and stack the odds behind your number. It’s the best odds in the casino and nobody likes the guy betting Don’t.

[1] https://iem.uiowa.edu/iem/

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#472

Post by sophrosyne42 »

llmthrow0827 wrote: post #347
socalgal2 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to prey on a subset of humanity This triggers thoughts. I don't like people being taken advantage of. At the same time, I like my personal liberties. It feels like you can spin this idea for nearly anything. Apparently 25% of alcohol sales are to alcoholics. That sucks and you could spin this has the liquor companies taking advantage, but I have tons of…

Personal liberties are overrated, and a functioning society is underrated. OnlyFans, sports betting, and junk food appeal to some people with low impulse control and high time preference in the short term, but have massive negative consequences on everyone in the long run.

The market producing what people desire is a functioning society. All the concern about so called addiction is simply a displaced puritanism disguised as humanism.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#473

Post by bethekidyouwant »

bombcar wrote: post #468
bethekidyouwant wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Some guy wants Polymarket gone so he bets $1 billion that it will be gone. Since this is absurd, everybody bets against him and makes a tidy profit. Whatever this is you’re proposing it doesn’t work.

I think they're saying you bet $1 billion it will not be gone, and someone takes that bet and kills Polymarket (How?)

Ah yes, of course and then he pays poly market ceo half that to close the company in time. But how do you not get screwed in your subterfuge?

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#474

Post by thirtygeo »

willturman wrote: post #279
willio58 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a state in the U.S. that’s had legalized gambling for decades. I grew up seeing gambling addicts walk around my city. It’s always been bad, but in my eyes it’s so much worse now that anyone can tip tap on their phone and gamble away everything they have. At least you used to have to fly to Vegas or something to bet (and lose) big.

Same. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to take a course on the Economics of Gaming from William Eadington [1] , who was the founder of Gambling Studies. Our final in 2008 consisted of two parts: predicting the electoral outcome of the Presidential election of each state where each state represented one percentage of our grade, and then a wager from 1-50 percentage points on whether the stock ma…

+1 please explain (and tell us your bet & final grade!!)

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#475

Post by randycupertino »

willio58 wrote: post #97
jackfruitpeel wrote: post #88

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

I live in a state in the U.S. that’s had legalized gambling for decades. I grew up seeing gambling addicts walk around my city. It’s always been bad, but in my eyes it’s so much worse now that anyone can tip tap on their phone and gamble away everything they have. At least you used to have to fly to Vegas or something to bet (and lose) big.

My friend's idiot loser husband got addicted to sports betting and day trading and lost their life savings and even spent kids college funds. She found out because he had started to apply for a home equity loan to catch up on some of his debts and they called her to verify some paperwork.

The only reason I found out was because she had a HUGE obnoxious gorgeous flower arrangement delivered to her at work and I asked her what they were for and she started crying and then told me they were his apology flowers - that he put on her credit card!

She doesn't want to divorce because their kids but I'm encouraging her to think about protecting herself and I sent her some attorney recommendation links. He's never had a decent job it's majority her income so divorcing isn't even that favorable for her now afaik. Sad situation.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#476

Post by hollerith »

sophrosyne42 wrote: post #472
llmthrow0827 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal liberties are overrated, and a functioning society is underrated. OnlyFans, sports betting, and junk food appeal to some people with low impulse control and high time preference in the short term, but have massive negative consequences on everyone in the long run.

The market producing what people desire is a functioning society. All the concern about so called addiction is simply a displaced puritanism disguised as humanism.

So, adults who gamble a lot never steal from their parents, siblings and friends in order to keep on gambling?

A father who gambles a lot would never threaten his parents or his wife's parents to stop allowing those parents to visit their grandchildren unless those parents give the father money for gambling? (I.e., the father is making the threat not because he judges the grandparents to be a bad influence on the child, but rather to extract money from the grandparents that the grandparents would not otherwise choose to give because they know it will just go to gambling.)

In your opinion, it is displaced puritanism to want to do something about the fact that in our society such things happen frequently?

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#477

Post by tjpnz »

mcmcmc wrote: post #132
bluetidepro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired. Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

I think the difference between the two is Amazon and Meta do provide some utility to balance it out, whereas gambling is purely a net negative on society. You can be young and naive enough to believe you're "making the world a better place" in big tech. You can't work on pure gambling products without being a scammer at heart; you know what you signed up for.

Nothing Meta has done comes remotely close to paying for the damage they've done to individuals and to society as a whole. I think the metamates know exactly what they're doing. There are innumerable documents with people at all levels admitting to literal crimes and how best to cover them up or minimize them. These are the types of people you wouldn't let into your home for fear of things going missing.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#478

Post by throwaway27448 »

erikerikson wrote: post #335
throwaway27448 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The "freedom" people refer to is "the freedom to be an asshole and exploit people without repercussion".

No. Those are the abusers of freedom who like to pretend their freedom doesn't stop at the tip of our collective noses. They are also a minority regardless of how vocal that small minority and the psyop saboteurs are that egg them on and keep them company.

Maybe we should just abandon the concept of "freedom" and embrace material values. Or is that too 19th-century progressive? Must we always ignore all discourse that happened after the bill of rights was scribbled?

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#479

Post by [deleted] »

Jerrrrrrrry wrote: post #333
alphawhisky wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about the freedom in your pants! And by that, I mean a Glock (not reproductive self determination or gender self determination, obviously).

Hmmm...Defending yourself is literally the same as abortion and gender dysphoria. No.

[deleted]

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#480

Post by hunterpayne »

georgemcbay wrote: post #234
dash2 wrote: post #67

An argument not mentioned here and which I didn’t appreciate until I actually took part in these markets myself, is that you need a supply of stupid/uninformed people to take the other side of the informed people’s bets.(In economic terms, no-trade theorems apply.) That suggests to me that the dream of perfect information revelation isn’t going to come true. Instead, the liquid markets will be those with a large supp…

I agree with you overall but I'm not sure the Trump bet is the best example. He certainly isn't going to be thrown out of office (unfortunately) but those 16% of bettors also win if he dies this year, and he's 80, fat, still gobbling burgers and shows signs of someone that has had at least one stroke so far. On the other hand he has access to the best medical care, but even still a 16% chance he drops dead before the…

Checks annuity tables for an 80 year old making it to 81...you giving 1:6 odds? Sure I will take that bet because the actual odds are only a small fraction. If I spread out the risk on multiple positions, I can make a very good return taking those types of bets.

People that place bets on the political outcomes on PolyMarket are from one of three groups: 1) Insiders who think they have an edge (but probably don't), 2) fools that believe what their media of choice tells them and 3) People who make money on the first 2 groups.

We both know that that the Trump market and people who believe everything they see on MSNBC (or whatever it is called now) have a big overlap. Its basically a way to print money because there are always people who are out of touch enough to believe their side is right 100% of the time and a wave is coming in the next election. Is this taking advantage of them? Maybe, but they are a walking negative externality in every other way in life so why not. Consider it a tax on political extremism and partisanship which I think it a good thing. Prove me wrong...

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