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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

#691

Post by lokar »

noname123 wrote: post #686
waffletower wrote: post #552

[flagged]

My apologist response would be that Polymarket isn’t the root cause—it’s more of a mirror. It simply makes the incentives and speculation already present in late-stage capitalism more transparent and accessible for anyone to participate in. You argue that platforms like this encourage speculation about things like celebrity deaths. But celebrity culture is already heavily monetized—think Page Six, Access Hollywood, l…

I don't think it is a mirror, quite the opposite. I think most Americans (and probably europeans?) think a lot of this is in fact very bad, and should be stopped.

The problem is that our lawmakers are not mirroring what the voters want.

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

#692

Post by lokar »

scoofy wrote: post #600
jkaplowitz wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> generally speaking, gambling more than a token sum (say, less than $100) should not be legal exactly because any benefits of gambling is far outweighed by the mountains of externalities it brings. Yes, this includes the obvious incentives to threaten random people. It's bad for society, so it should be effectively banned. I agree with you in theory, but remember that people frequently do illegal things, just illega…

>If we assume that people will in practice gamble whether or not it's legal, I'd rather the gambling not be run by organized crime free from the ability of everyone else to oversee and regulate. I don't see why we should assume that. Making something annoying to engage in dramatically reduces the amount of people who engage in it. If illegal gambling rings operate, you'd have to 'know a guy' and the gambling ring wou…

The approach of allowing a limited amount of some "vice" (or otherwise disfavored activity), highly regulated, combined with stiff penalties for illegal use is a pretty common approach to greatly reduce anti-social activity.

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

#693

Post by beepbooptheory »

scoofy wrote: post #575
waffletower wrote: post #552

[flagged]

Look, it's not the point your making, but Adam Smith was not a laissez-faire capitalist. If you want to do the "capitalism bad" thing, I would suggest learning a bit of history, or at least understand that the " laissez-faire " in laissez-faire capitalism is a political ideology, not an economic ideology. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/the-gu... More to your point... I don't think economic theo…

Small nit but you probably don't mean to say that you are a "capitalist" here, even if you maybe own some significant capital. Not because its wrong, but it's not what your trying to appeal to (ideological commitment). A "capitalist" can believe in anything really, they are such by virtue of their relation to the overall economy. Its kinda like saying "I'm a digestor of food" instead of "a patron of restaurants."

You are, quite succintly, a liberal in your beliefs here. This is not liberal in the CNN/Fox News sense, in case this comes off offensive.

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

#694

Post by lokar »

casey2 wrote: post #648
scoofy wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, it's not the point your making, but Adam Smith was not a laissez-faire capitalist. If you want to do the "capitalism bad" thing, I would suggest learning a bit of history, or at least understand that the " laissez-faire " in laissez-faire capitalism is a political ideology, not an economic ideology. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/the-gu... More to your point... I don't think economic theo…

Name one (1) human activity in your opinion that isn't bad for society People taking care of cats have done large damage to bird populations and many people are infected with pathogens carried by cats. How many people are killed by dogs each year? Should we ban caring for animals too? There are no 0 harm activities. Reasonably splitting activities up into subcategories and regulating those makes way more sense. Your…

We have a system. Free speech, public debate and democratic elections.

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

#695

Post by scoofy »

fritzo wrote: post #628
scoofy wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. Just call it gambling. They aren't "prediction markets," they're just gambling. Gambling incentivizes the absolute worst in humanity.

We're not talking about gambling-as-addiction. We're talking about gambling as big players paying participants to throw fights, paying referees to call shots, and the players are the real world and the referees are journalists.

I agree.

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

#696

Post by newswasboring »

noitpmeder wrote: post #556
loeg wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket is headquartered in NYC; it's a US company; it has many US customers, and it knows that, even if it did a wink-wink dance "disallowing" that prior to 2024. Since then, it has explicitly expanded into the US market[1]. It is unambiguously subject to US regulations (if we had a regulator who chose to enforce those regulations). [1]: "Following the end of the investigations, Polymarket announced the acquisiti…

As I understand it they operate as two separate entities -- polymarket US and polymarket INTL.

Yeah but we can see right through all that lawyer bullshit right? Gambling markets like polymarket are morally corrupt and we having given them too much space in our society already.

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

#698

Post by geor9e »

derangedHorse wrote: post #481
geor9e wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely I am misreading what you mean here. But your comment very much reads like you think "Iran strikes Israel on March 10" at 25% odds is what in fact caused Iran to strike Israel on March 10. I'll search the space of other interpretations in the mean time, but if you could help me out here and clarify…

> But your comment very much reads like you think "Iran strikes Israel on March 10" at 25% odds is what in fact caused Iran to strike Israel on March 10 I don't know how you extrapolated that from the parent's comment. It literally said nothing about the cause and effect of this particular event. Knowing the odds in a prediction market IS a big part of the problem brought up in the linked article though (and the bets…

>how you extrapolated that

I wasn't extrapolating - it was the literal meaning of the words. The context was that someone commented "shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called outcome-shaping markets" in direct reply to "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over…[the prediction market "Iran strikes Israel on March 10"]. I interpret that as polymarket gamblers outcome-shaped Iran striking Israel. It was at 25% odds when they struck. I don't think the commenter actually meant that literally, which is why I asked them to clarify. I'm just doing my best here.

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

#699

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #667
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like my point more than anything (in the scope of this discussion) is that, relevant to the discussion (Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story) > What's "parasitic" about the median person on the site? The median is kinda skewed to be honest. The median you and I think is very few percentage points in my opinion.

Let me say "typical" then? Second most malicious quintile? I'm avoiding "average" because one bad actor will spoil the average. But if you exclude the worst ten percent, what's wrong with everyone else? The people in the article are in that worst bunch. But you critiqued basically everyone on the site. Also did you finish your first sentence?

There are definitely some (very few) people who can maybe use the platform in a "decent manner" but I feel like its 1 out of 20 type situation but sure theoretically I have nothing against those people actually.

> But you critiqued basically everyone on the site

My apologies in the sense, that I mean to critique the 19/20 people. I did think when writing the first comment that maybe I should've highlighted it more but I already partially did it by writing "degenerate" etc. words

So I definitely agree with you on that aspect. Not everyone especially not the people you are talking about now are parasitic in that sense but key point being the people mentioned in the article being the worst bunch as you mention.

> Also did you finish your first sentence?

Yea, I re-read it, it feels incomplete but in essence, I sort of agree.

TLDR: I can agree with ya in the sense that there are definitely some people on the platform who can use it in a decent manner but the people mentioned in the article aren't the ones. Also even with that being said, I feel like the platforms can push the people with decent manners to indecency.

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

#700

Post by Invictus0 »

scoofy wrote: post #589
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…

>These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. Just call it gambling. They aren't "prediction markets," they're just gambling. Gambling incentivizes the absolute worst in humanity.

That's fundamentally wrong
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