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

derekthompson.org

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

#711

Post by munificent »

amarant wrote: post #384
munificent wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want your labor enriching someone you think is a bad person? Do you want someone whose values go against yours being in a position of power over you?

Yes, I'm not so petty that I wish poverty upon everyone who holds a opinion different from mine! I'm a live and let live kind of guy

Not wanting to work for someone or not wanting to hire someone is not equivalent to wishing poverty on them.

My daughter thinks shrimp are adorable little animals and doesn't eat them. That's a moral choice she has every right to make. She is not saying anyone who eats shrimp is a terrible person or trying to outlaw it.

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

#712

Post by cortesoft »

Miraste wrote: post #666
cortesoft wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is. I think this is waaaay too black and white. Gambling can be fun, and there isn't anything wrong with enjoying gambling in a healthy manner. It is very comparable to drinking, I think. I refuse to apologize for enjoying the occasional drink or the occasional game of poker. I like a poker game with friends, I enjoy sitting at a blackjack table for a few hour…

There is a line between a poker game with friends, or even a professional poker industry, and a sophisticated tech company operating a nationwide low-friction gambling app, incentivized to optimize harming its users as much as possible. This line was enshrined into law until recently.

I agree, which is why I think it is going too far to say “anyone who works in the gambling industry is bad”

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

#713

Post by cortesoft »

netrap wrote: post #595
cortesoft wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd like to propose not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I accept this argument about gambling might be slippery-slope-able but I think it's pretty obvious to everyone without a vested interest that it's causing extreme societal harm. I am pretty sure anyone without a vested interest will also realize that alcoholism has caused extreme societal harm as well. I would say with pretty strong certainty tha…

We ban other drugs though? Just saying that we DO ban things already...

Yeah, and that is a great example of how it doesn’t work.

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

#714

Post by Terr_ »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #667
kqr wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody says this on assumption. It's well-evidenced. https://polymarket.com/accuracy https://www.metaculus.com/questions/track-record/

Please show the dollar/realized benefit to society VS (in response to OPs statement) the results don't "justify the cost, corruption and a loss of trust in institutions" along with a breakdown of the cost/negatives to society that result from those factors. This isn't big oil (yet) you can't just externalize all the downside and say the product is a net benefit.

Pish tosh, my dear sir, it's simply common-sense that there are oodles of people out there with secrets that would be completely ethical to distribute and would undeniably better all humankind, but they're sitting on them purely because they haven't figured out how to make a profit from it. /s

In other words, the overlap between these is too small to justify the idea that prediction markets are a net-benefit by default:

1. Is valuable

2. Not already known

3. No current reward mechanism exists (e.g. patents)

4. Not criminal or unethical to disclose

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

#715

Post by hpdigidrifter »

kranke155 wrote: post #574
YZF wrote: post #490

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/court-idf-reser... This was just on the news: "A reservist suspected of using classified information to place bets on the Polymarket prediction site served as a major in the Israeli Air Force, a Tel Aviv Court reveals. The defendant was indicted alongside his alleged accomplice last month on severe security offenses, as well as bribery and obstruction of justice, after the…

This is the literally the only use of prediction markets in the real world - insider trading leaks information

>literally the only use

I live in Taiwan

Can you find me an insurance company that will pay me out in case of a war with China? From what I see absolutely no one will insure that.

A $1k premium paid to Polymarket will cover me handsomely in the event of war and pay out instantly with no hassles.

A counterpoint to your hyperbole.

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

#716

Post by bit-anarchist »

Terr_ wrote: post #710
bit-anarchist wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest that you think rationally about what you just said. Why wound anyone open a bet on "rando's house will be set on fire"? Why would they bet on "yes"? You can't present a generic case such as that without going into details about motivations and actual incentives. Those way worse events also have a lot of extra political motivations behind it. If someone starts a war with the sole intention of winning a bet,…

> I suggest that you think rationally about what you just said. Why wound anyone That doesn't read like a good-faith response. Parent-poster brought up an archetypal scenario asserting that certain people are ignoring malice/harms because they are not personally affected, exhibiting a latent logical contradiction or double-standard. Instead of addressing the actual point (the existence/seriousness of the harm categor…

The existence and severity of the harm, as argued by OP, relies on incentives. But incentives don't exist on a vacuum, nor are they individually absolute over human behavior. Simply stating that something has a bad incentive and that'll result in evil, on its own, isn't much better than assuming spherical cows.

The reason I nitpicked on the arsonist example is to elaborate on that: the arsonist does indeed have an incentive to put fire onto someone's house due to the bet, but the bet itself increases the probability of the fire being prevented, the culprit being caught, etc., which are all disincentives that may negate the original misaligned incentive. When we escape from this particular scenario onto others, this pattern remains. If the disincentives didn't prevent said harm, there are only two causes:

- culprit is unreasonable beyond saving: this one is trivial - they are beyond saving. Banning gambling would simply cause them to commit crimes in a different way;

- the mechanisms behind the disincentives are malfunctioning or aren't enough: that warrants an investigation onto said mechanisms, not a ban on prediction markets.

Perhaps this has made it clearer that, at least from my perspective, these "irrelevant details" aren't irrelevant.

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

#717

Post by DirkH »

kakadu wrote: post #501
joelthelion wrote: post #499

There is a class of prediction markets that are useful and seem immune to most of these problems : play money prediction markets. I've been enjoying them for years; I feel they provide a useful service to understand what is going on in the world, and they don't seem to provide the perverse incentives that we are seeing here. Oh, and they seem to work just as well.

> There is a class of prediction markets that are useful No there is not. That's as damaging a statement as "soft" drugs or "problem" gambling. Statements usured by corporate PR to set up a fake middle ground and delegate responsibility to the consumer for any "bad" behaviour.

There literally are drugs vastly less addictive and harmful than others. So some designation of some as "soft" and others as "hard" is not unwarranted (though we can argue where that cutoff is) and anything that paints all drugs the same is a false equivalence that suspiciously appears more ideologically anti-drug driven rather than impartial evidence-driven.

Same goes for anyone saying all gambling is the same.

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

#718

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

gadders wrote: post #633
vincnetas wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so why advertise gambling or any other of them?

Food addiction kills too. Shall we stop advertising food?

> Food addiction kills too. Shall we stop advertising food?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5y2vzlyldo

> 4 January 2026: Junk food adverts are banned on television and online starting on Monday as part of a drive to tackle childhood obesity.

It seems that the factual answer is "yes", in certain conditions of the most addictive food and most susceptible audience.

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

#719

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

whoiskevin wrote: post #645
gadders wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food addiction kills too. Shall we stop advertising food?

Why should we advertise something that you have to go consume? Do you need advertising to tell you about bread, vegetables, meat?

> Do you need advertising to tell you about bread, vegetables, meat?

Looking around at the world, yes?

Less-heathy takeaway chains do advertise constantly, and concepts like the food pyramid are there to literally "tell you about bread, vegetables, meat" as an advertisement for a better alternative.

People aren't born knowing this - if they don't learn it from parents, they will either learn it from someone else, or not know it and have a poor diet out of ignorance.

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