501–510 of 1001 posts
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that there was no safe course of action for the journalist because there was money on both sides of this outcome. No matter what he reported, he would have the other side threatening him.
Perhaps because he is a journalist whose job is to report reality, not avoid threats?
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You should have lost your respect for the "rationalist" "community" a long time ago. They are aggressively wrong about everything, and most of them are eugenicists.
They WANT to think in absolutes which is a red flag in a person.
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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.
Yes, I think they should implement KYC pretty darn quick, and perhaps there’s more they can do. But he didn’t make the death threats.
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Polymarket runs on Polygon, which, like most blockchains, has public history. If the user wasn't very careful about how they got their money into the system, it traces back to a public cryptocurrency exchange with KYC records.
...so then trace the transfer to each identity? How does knowing the first person in the chain help identify the 2nd and 3rd, etc? What if there are 50 identities and the coin has a dozen origins?
You're also assuming Ethereum-clone chains work the same way as Bitcoin. They do not. An Ethereum wallet has a single long-term identity.
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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.
Yes, I think they should implement KYC pretty darn quick, and perhaps there’s more they can do. But he didn’t make the death threats.
There is a fundamental architectural problem here with no easy band-aid fix, and the companies involved are desperate to deny it because their founders have personal fortunes riding on it.
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B-b-but futarchy and unbiased decisionmaking means well-calibrated markets could be a net good for society!! /hj
Ugh, the sophistry (or at least self-deceiving arguments) people throw around to defend these markets makes my stomach churn.
-- Cyborg Upton Sinclair
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>A sane system would just throw him in jail. A capricious system that interprets based on whim, politics and influence is a large part of how we got here. People like this and their less than moral path in which they further their endeavors succeed specifically because of this environment. Polymarket is basically a platform to monetize petty stuff while also being able to monetize bad stuff. There is soooo much press…
It is not capricious to hold C-suite legally accountable for their choices. Lots of corporate scandals would simply not have happened if decisionmakers had skin in the game. If CISOs can have personal liability for data breaches, CEOs can have personal liability for intentionally creating an illegal platform. Instead we reward these people with billions for degrading the fabric of society.
Where’s this, now?
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You should have lost your respect for the "rationalist" "community" a long time ago. They are aggressively wrong about everything, and most of them are eugenicists.
I lost most of my respect for g...n when i noticed he he was one of those IQ guys
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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.
The failure of the rationalist community is they mistook rationalization for rationality.
A weird synthesis of the goofy, the immature, the delusional, and the grandiose shot through with mental illness.
The pull quote "The attempt by these gamblers to pressure me to change my reporting so that they would win their bet did not and will not succeed. But I do worry that other journalists may not be as ethical if they are promised some of the winnings" misses something. If the reporter changes his story, then the people on the other side of the bet might start harassing him. OTOH individual betters anger will depend whi…
Also that journalists are paid for their work, often by someone with political interests, so they are already subject to pressure to modify their reporting. Hopefully not usually threats of violence though!
In contrast:
1. Any number of arbitrary unknown bettors on a could commit violence for reasons you'd never have even anticipated, like whether an event happened at 4:59 or at 5:01.
2. The violence can arrive from all sides, simultaneously. Bettors who like what you wrote are not your allies, and one way to ensure an existing report is not revised is to put the journalist out of commission.
3. The same "prediction" market can act as a criminal coordinator for subcontracting the violence, with a new bet: "Will $JOURNALIST revise $ARTICLE with $CHANGE on or before $TIME?"