Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

timesofisrael.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 1001 posts

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

#701

Post by scoofy »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #625
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…

And "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", does not mean "you can do anything you want", it's much, much closer in meaning to the famous quote from the Upanishads (Crowley largely felt that much of esoterism was basically, as Dion Fortune put it "Yoga of the West"): > “You are what your deepest desire is. As is your desire, so is your intention. As is your intention, so is your will. As is your will, so i…

This entire discussion is ridiculous. We shouldn't be conflating the serious economic and philosophical work of someone like Adam Smith with the rantings of someone like Aleister Crowley. It's absurd.

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

#702

Post by aerhardt »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #636
waffletower wrote: post #552

[flagged]

Wild misunderstanding of Smith. He considered it a moral defect, wrote several pieces criticizing gambling, and criticized state run gambling. "The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an ancient evil... their absurd presumption in their own good fortune, is even more universal."

Par for the course for many who mention Adam Smith. Another classic libel is bringing up his name in cases of gross misconduct by a business or a businessman, but he was very critical of the excesses of merchants. Smith was a moral philosopher first and an accidental economist second.

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

#703

Post by heisenbit »

awakeasleep wrote: post #389

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.

> No matter what he reported, he would have the other side threatening him.

That is why modern reportings best practice is to always support both sides. /s

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

#704

Post by waffletower »

kasey_junk wrote: post #676
waffletower wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't matter here, in specific, if he is misrepresented. He came up with the "invisible hand" concept and he didn't consider its shadow/consequences. He shouldn't be personally faulted for it, he was just one man sharing his thinking a long time ago. Living people are to blame for not correcting for these shortcomings enough. I learned that it would have been best to have just said laissez-faire capitalis…

You’ll not find “the invisible hand” in wealth of nations as a major concept. It was a throw away phrase that wasn’t a central part of his writing.

So many Smith apologists. I don't believe he should be demonized, and perhaps I am guilty of this by mentioning his name and 'satanic' in the same sentence, but he decidedly should not be lionized either. So many are drunk with history and shirk the work to evolve and transcend it. It doesn't matter if Adam Smith had morality and consideration, those are not ideals his writing ultimately bred, what matters are the free market ideals he clearly encouraged long ago, are now wildly out of control.

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

#705

Post by bradleyjg »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #545
charcircuit wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yeah, but how do you find the person making the threats? Subpoena Meta for all of the IPs of the account. Subpoena the ISPs for data who was using the IP. Bring in the likely people who were sending the message for questioning.

And when the people sending the messages turn out to be in a different country?

Maybe they are all in North Korea and beyond any extradition. But police broadly defined don’t even try very hard when it comes to certain crimes.

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

#706

Post by andai »

bluGill wrote: post #570
andai wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>outcome shaping markets I heard something remarkable many years ago, that there are websites on the dark web where you can bet on which day someone is going to die. In other words you can pay to have them assassinated in a very indirect way. It's like kickstarter, for assassinations. When enough funds are raised, a willing volunteer simply places a bet on the day when they plan to carry out the deed. So they win the…

Kickstarter exists. The real problem is most things cost more than the average person should dare risk. Some widget today is worth more than the same tommorow. Most people should not back your eink laptop even though if it existed they would pay more for it.

Yeah it's about trust and risk.

I'm not sure how to align the incentives on that.

For the consumer the ideal case is that the money is not released from the escrow until their product actually arrives.

But that would be overly restrictive, and limit development to companies with significant funds.

Kickstarter has a balance where, you only pledge money after deciding you trust the company.

I think we could do it so the initial fundraiser is provisional. And then everyone would know that some portion of that would fall through. Over time you would learn what the ratio is. If a million is pledged, maybe you can expect 200k to be committed in the final round.

We could even divide it further. There is some portion of users which are more open-minded and enthusiastic. They might be happy to fund a round of crappy prototypes. So in this way smaller players could gain trust and credibility.

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

#707

Post by fritzo »

scoofy wrote: post #695
fritzo wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just checking :) Didn't want to confuse two totally different equally compelling reasons to ban prediction markets

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

#708

Post by scoofy »

lokar wrote: post #692
scoofy wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yes... harm reduction approaches can be effective. The point is that they also need a "very annoying" frictional element to prevent harm reduction from creating worse outcomes than prohibition.

The existing Las Vegas & Indian casino system we had previously effectively achieved this goal by making any gambling habit include regular travel, which itself prevents the habit from becoming a daily or even weekly activity.

"Legalizing dangerous drugs" doesn't mean you can go to the store and buy meth. I mean we create a safe consumption site, where you have to go through harm reduction education, be offered alternatives, and likely have things like blood work done to check for potential disease spread and damage from the drugs themselves.

The point is that the harm reduction strategy has to be annoying enough where non-addicts would not engage in the process, whereas addicts would go through the process trivially.

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

#709

Post by postalrat »

bagacrap wrote: post #325
postalrat wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace gamblers with futures market and I agree.

Commodities futures markets have an actual purpose, which is to make business inputs (or outputs) more predictable. Like if I know I need ten tons of corn next year, it's safer to buy futures now than to wait and see how the price of corn fluctuates over that time, potentially sabotaging my business operation. (Of making corn chips.)

Similar business cases can be made for futures from polymarket. For example if I start a business in the USA I may want to hedge by buying some futures Jesus will not return before 2027.

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

#710

Post by scoofy »

nickburns wrote: post #635
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…

Excuse my ignorance if otherwise obvious—but how does legalized but untaxed gambling raise any public revenue? Bookie licensing?

Why on earth would you think it's untaxed? A legalized gambling business trivially creates taxable income.
Post reply on HN