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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

#721

Post by AngryData »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #32

I don’t understand how this isn’t an immediate open and shut case for the police, assuming certain facts are verified independently. At the point that you’re making death threats to strangers you should be removed from civil society.

US cops don't care about solving crimes or making people safe, they only care about making a profit. And harassing random motorists on the side of the road is way easier and safer profits than trying to deal with real crime involving people with money that can afford their own lawyers to fight back.

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

#722

Post by danny_codes »

JohnMakin wrote: post #649
danny_codes wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling has a heavy association with criminality. By allowing open gambling we must also accept the externalities. Or we could, you know, not legalize gambling.

I do not think it is so clear cut as legalize/not legalize. Current legislation often doesn't even consider this gambling - however, even if you took the viewpoint that making it illegal helps, you then have to accept the externalities that arise - crime rings will develop that offer the services, and now their users are criminals and completely vulnerable to any amount of bad/malicious practices there.

Which, historically, is a much smaller and easier problem than legalized, unregulated gambling.

We already have a model for this in the casino system.

Like sure, there’s some small black market here, but it’s relatively minuscule.

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

#723

Post by Rodeoclash »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #684
notepad0x90 wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, it isn't all that different than derivatives and other established securities. On the other, the extremes of gambling are deterimental. You can either take the libertarian view that it should be allowed until someone is put in harms way, or take the prohibitionist view that it should all be illegal. With the latter approach, you will be doing more harm than good potentially, because it will just become a…

Let me make an obvious opposing argument: what is the social benefit in allowing people to gamble on the outcome of a sports match, or any other event? We encourage investment in the market in theory to allow companies to grow and produce things many people might benefit from (how well that works is another thing...). Gambling as far as I can see is net negative to everyone but the winners, and not entirely positive…

The social benefit is that it gives a controlled outlet for the need to gamble when managed by the government.

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

#724

Post by tuple »

margalabargala wrote: post #688
derf_ wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strong regulation and legal consequences could potentially fix this. There are regulations. E.g., in the US, 17 CFR § 40.11 prohibits contracts on "terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or an activity that is unlawful under any State or Federal law" [0]. The problem is that those responsible for enforcing those regulations are currently uninterested in doing so [1]. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/40.1…

Yeah, regulations are only as strong as the consequences given those who break them. If people can threaten journalists for money and get away with it, they will. If people who threaten journalists over money are sent to prison, then after a brief transition period it will mostly stop.

It's braindead easy to anonymously threaten people on the internet. It's getting easier to steal identities or create new ones out of whole cloth and cypto wallets means you can't functionally know where the money comes from. I'm not sure attempting to punish people you can't realistically identify can be considered an effective strategy.

Punishing a corporate entity however is much easier.

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

#725

Post by nickburns »

scoofy wrote: post #710
nickburns wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, right. These legalized bookies should be paying income tax to the jurisidictions they operate in (albeit probably happening as reliably as winning bettors are on their winnings).

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

#726

Post by LeifCarrotson »

geor9e wrote: post #466
sam0x17 wrote: post #459

I really wonder whether privacy would actually be the answer here --- prediction markets as they are now where the odds are public really shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called "outcome-shaping markets" because largely that is what they do, they let people shape real-world outcomes with massive amounts of liquidity. If instead these were privacy protocols where you can see how much liquidity is…

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…

I was confused as well: After further consideration, I realized that Polymarket only resolves on actual event outcomes insofar as mainstream journalism accurately and credibly reports on those events and their resolution criteria rely on those reports. When it's easier or more reliable to influence reporting around outcomes than the outcomes themselves, bettors will seek to influence the behavior of reporters rather than the behavior of eg. national militaries.

"Iran strikes Israel on March 10" is a difficult outcome to force one way or the other. But "The Times of Israel’s military correspondent or other credible sources reports that Iran strikes Israel on March 10" merely requires intimidating or bribing one journalist. The existence of the bet didn't cause the missile strike or the failed interception. But it did cause a significant, heavily motivated dis-information campaign from people who stood to lose a lot of money.

In a similar way, people fear that prediction markets estimating times of death are equivalent to assassination markets. But murder is an aggressively prosecuted serious crime. It seems that it would be far easier and lower risk to bribe, coerce, pretend to be, or literally be a reporter who got a false obituary published - wait until the "victim" is going to be offline for a few days and can't be contacted to prove they're not dead, trick some tropical country's coast guard into confirming that the victim's yacht exploded offshore, point Polymarket at the obituaries, grab all the crypto, and disappear. If you fail to disappear successfully, your worst crime is publishing a fictional news article/bribing/threatening a journalist. You don't have to risk being in the legal jurisdiction of the victim and getting your hands bloody, you don't even have to be in the same hemisphere: you only need convince the prediction market resolution criteria that something happened.

Scott Alexander wrote about a related issue last month in the colorfully named section [1] "Annals of the Rulescucks", where he described a half dozen scenarios where the outcome may or may not have diverged from the actual event. A bet isn't resolved by eyewitnesses, it's resolved over the Internet through another financial instrument.

[1]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/i/184065379/annals-of-the-rul...

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

#727

Post by nvader »

gopher_space wrote: post #439
throw4847285 wrote: post #233

I would love to read the Philip K Dick story about this, but I'm not enjoying living in it.

Delphi markets feature prominently in Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. It's an important book, and Brunner is amazing if you've never read him before. He's actually one of my metrics for judging used book stores. Sci-fi has Brunner, politics has Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, nonfiction has someone's old annotated copy of G.E.B.

Look everyone, this person believes talking Tortoises are real!

In all seriousness, I love G.E.B. how do you use it to judge a given used book store?

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

#728

Post by arduanika »

caminante wrote: post #222
Bender wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submission is currently still under 2 hours old so defly could edit if they see your comment. After that it would be up to dang.

It's thoughtful of you to point out, though, not a big deal.

It's a big deal to me! I have a bet riding on this! If the mods don't change the headline to contain the word "rewrite" by midnight PST, then... eh, nvm, I probably shouldn't even joke about this.

(To be clear, this whole story is horrifying. I hope there's a way to identify these bettors and bring them to justice.)

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

#729

Post by shermantanktop »

waffletower wrote: post #720
WillPostForFood wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I do take Adam Smith out of context, that is the precise point -- the invisible hand of self-interest is the salient idea that has endured and shaped modern Hypercapitalism. It doesn't matter if he is rolling in his grave at audio frequencies due to my and, more importantly, society's alleged misappropriation of his work and misunderstanding of his many moral considerations. He was effectively soundbited centuries ag…

Much like Marx, who had a lot of very insightful observations.

Whether what was done in his name is or isn't directly attributable to his writings is somewhat academic. That has taken on a life of its own, and overshadowed all his other ideas.

It has also certainly made talking about class in America very difficult.

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

#730

Post by hcs »

andai wrote: post #543
sam0x17 wrote: post #459

I really wonder whether privacy would actually be the answer here --- prediction markets as they are now where the odds are public really shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called "outcome-shaping markets" because largely that is what they do, they let people shape real-world outcomes with massive amounts of liquidity. If instead these were privacy protocols where you can see how much liquidity is…

>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…

> But what if you could push?

There are a number of so-called "bounty" programs like this for software, I don't know how well any of them work.

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