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Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

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Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#71

Post by FabHK »

dheera wrote: post #32
locallost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's surprising because the alternative would be that some people are able to predict the future. Whatever strategy one might figure out that works is long term destined to fail, as other people start using them. The only real way to make money there is by providing liquidity since it's a zero sum game. For the stock market this is not true because it's not zero sum, it grows over time.

The stock market is arguably zero sum as well, just that directionally betting on the US has generally worked during the golden years of the US economy. The stock markets of the world aren't a money printer.

The stock market is not in the least zero sum. That's just a fundamental misunderstanding. There's dividends, capital allocation, etc.

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#72

Post by vcf »

postflopclarity wrote: post #48
nh23423fefe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

phrenology

if you're not able to tell that OP's comment was AI slop, then you probably don't have much insight to contribute to the conversation either.

not AI slop, simply a copy paste if the abstract of the paper. journals in our field limit the allowed number of words, so the style can feel « unnatural » even when human-written

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#73

Post by amelius »

nonethewiser wrote: post #66
amelius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you look at the Boltzmann Wealth Model, where every actor gives away 1 dollar to a random person, and you repeat this, then if you start with an equal wealth distribution, you end up with an exponential wealth distribution. That shows how strong exponential curves are :) A few "lucky" individuals become very wealthy, while the vast majority of people end up with very little or nothing. The effect is so strong…

>The effect is so strong that I'm starting to wonder if we should have laws against power laws This is literally and unironically communism.

Why? You want to earn exponentially more than other people the harder you work? Instead of just linear?

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#74

Post by FabHK »

manas96 wrote: post #38
matusp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/resolution

Interesting. Any (in)famous UMA vote debates? Or interesting Unknown/50-50 outcome resolutions?

Check Matt Levine's excellent "Money Stuff" column. He dissects a few examples (Ayatollah Khamenei, a recent public referendum, maybe more).

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#75

Post by meric_ »

vcf wrote: post #14
SamTinnerholm wrote: post #3

[flagged]

We have a grad student working on matching markets across venues. Not a trivial task at scale, but we hope to look at that eventually.

I'd be very cautious how matching works. For some markets like sports it's trivial, but many politics or economics markets have minute rule differences that dramatically change what the actual market is betting on. Many markets have identical titles but are actually totally different markets.

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#76

Post by pstuart »

amelius wrote: post #70
pstuart wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a dumbed down version of this question as variant of the Voight-Kampff test (Bladerunner) that goes like this. You have 2 choices for how the world is shaped, pick 1: A. You have a modest but comfortable home, a job that pays you enough so that you have what you need and can afford occasional luxuries (e.g., an annual holiday abroad), have good health insurance, access to education and childcare, etc. Everybod…

I think most people want to earn more the harder they work, and I think that is fine. However, power laws basically spoil it because it gives a hard worker an exponential advantage, where they can (and will) use that money against other people who made different life choices.

I agree that people want to be rewarded for their effort, and should be.

But putting in 12 hour days being an EMT and saving peoples lives vs 12 hour days working with Claude to boost conversion pipelines have wildly different economic rewards.

I'm not suggesting a Harrison Bergeron economy but its also clear that the current system is trending towards B and the game is rigged to ensure that.

We don't live in a meritocracy -- there's a fair amount of luck involved (being in the right place at the right time).

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#77

Post by newfriend »

pstuart wrote: post #62
Balgair wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, do we want the economy to be stable? Not in a 'oh the rich don't so they control the media and so we don't' sorta way. But like in a 'lets educate people on the pluses and minuses, debate a while, and then come to an informed conclusion' sorta way. Like, deep down, does the average person actually want a stable economy? Because it seems to me that there is an even split historically between the folks that wan…

I have a dumbed down version of this question as variant of the Voight-Kampff test (Bladerunner) that goes like this. You have 2 choices for how the world is shaped, pick 1: A. You have a modest but comfortable home, a job that pays you enough so that you have what you need and can afford occasional luxuries (e.g., an annual holiday abroad), have good health insurance, access to education and childcare, etc. Everybod…

You could go do A right now at a local level. You don't though, because you don't actually want to live that way. It reeks of virtue signaling despite your protest.

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#78

Post by Retr0id »

vcf wrote: post #72
postflopclarity wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're not able to tell that OP's comment was AI slop, then you probably don't have much insight to contribute to the conversation either.

not AI slop, simply a copy paste if the abstract of the paper. journals in our field limit the allowed number of words, so the style can feel « unnatural » even when human-written

The abstract doesn't mention arbitrage at all

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#79

Post by b40d-48b2-979e »

vcf wrote: post #72
postflopclarity wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're not able to tell that OP's comment was AI slop, then you probably don't have much insight to contribute to the conversation either.

not AI slop, simply a copy paste if the abstract of the paper. journals in our field limit the allowed number of words, so the style can feel « unnatural » even when human-written

Forget to swap accounts?

Re: Who wins and who loses in prediction markets? Evidence from Polymarket

#80

Post by l23k4 »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #42
Retr0id wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at the user's history, it's more obvious in context. It has a lot of claude-specific tells which are noticeable if you've spent time working with claude. AI-generated comments are against the HN guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated

phrenology

SamTinnerholm started to consistently use emdash in their comments starting 11 days ago, before that none of their comments used emdash.

LLMs like emdash very much, humans don't use it very much these days.

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