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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

#841

Post by stephenbez »

joks wrote: post #779
lordnacho wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning it sends it underground into the hands of organised crime, which will still have access to modern technology. There's going to be a net loss, but it's probably better to regulate it than have another war on drugs.

It was only a few years ago that sports betting was significantly more heavily regulated and limited, and stuff like Polymarket didn't exist (just non-monetary forecasting sites like Metaculus.) Even if there was more demand for "underground gambling" before these changes, the net negative to society was still significantly less.

There were other prediction markets like Intrade which was founded in 1999. I had coworkers who made a significant amount of money doing prediction market arbitrage for the 2012 election.

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

#842

Post by braiamp »

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."

It's funny as a economist people thinking that the free market is some kind of god, that the invisible hand is infallible. He never argued markets work without institutions. He believed governments must enforce justice, prevent monopolies, and provide public goods for markets to function properly.

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

#843

Post by jacquesm »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #225
xvector wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not capricious to hold C-suite legally accountable for their choices. Lots of corporate scandals would simply not have happened if decisionmakers had skin in the game. If CISOs can have personal liability for data breaches, CEOs can have personal liability for intentionally creating an illegal platform. Instead we reward these people with billions for degrading the fabric of society.

We need either a “corporate death penalty” of sorts, more personal liability for c-suite execs, or some combo of the two. Too many people fail upwards to trust the system to sort out the “bad ones.”

It exists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_dissolution

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

#844

Post by jacquesm »

sharp_runner_84 wrote: post #249

this was kind of inevitable once prediction markets got large enough. when traders have millions in open positions on geopolitical events, they have direct financial incentive to suppress or promote specific narratives. same dynamic as short sellers attacking companies, but applied to real-world events instead of stocks. the whole prediction market thesis assumes information flows freely into prices — breaks down whe…

> the whole prediction market thesis assumes information flows freely into prices — breaks down when participants start trying to influence the information itself

How naive can you possibly be...

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

#845

Post by crazygringo »

Zambyte wrote: post #603
crazygringo wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the risks I don't have the slightest idea what point you're trying to make with this. Journalists make lots of people unhappy with their reporting, if you're referring to risks to journalists? Indeed that's part of the job of being a truth teller. > nobody sane uses the stock market as an indicator for the future I don't think you understand. If you think you can do a better job of predicting the future th…

Making people unhappy doesn't cause them to declare bankruptcy and become homeless. People may lose their reputation by reporting falsehoods in the paper (though probably not). People might read incorrect information in the newspaper. People may directly lose access to food and shelter due to gambling. The risks are no where close to equivalent. > I don't think you understand. [...] I don't think you understand. Let'…

People can go bankrupt from sports betting, from financial investing, they go bankrupt in lots of different ways through all sorts of bad decisions. If you want to outlaw recreational betting entirely, and restrict things like Polymarket and the stock market entirely to people like "accredited investors" who are supposedly responsible enough not to go bankrupt, then maybe argue for that, but not against Polymarket specifically. And then you're going to have to argue why that doesn't restrict people's freedom -- why should only richer people be allowed to trade on information? Doesn't that disadvantage the average citizen?

> What does that tell you about the future?

Are these supposed to be trick questions or something? They tell you exactly what they tell you. I already told you -- the stock price is a prediction of NPV of future profits. Did you see that in my last comment? Do you understand that? If that isn't a concrete, actionable and valuable prediction, I don't know what is.

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

#846

Post by arduanika »

janalsncm wrote: post #611
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…

That wouldn’t solve the issue in the article. The gamblers threatening the journalist know how much money they individually gambled on an outcome, which means they know how much they stand to lose if they cannot pressure a source to alter reporting in their favor.

Yeah. It seems like one of these two things is true:

Case 1. sam0x17 has read TFA carefully and he is proposing, without spelling it out very well, that the oracle should point at anonymous deciders instead of at vetted outlets with well-known reporters. This is the charitable case, but it seems unlikely, and it carries its own problems.

or

Case 2. sam0x17 goes through his life wielding a giant hammer called "privacy", which he swings about wildly without ever feeling the need to look very closely at any given nail. In fact, he'll even shout "privacy" in the face of a situation where privacy *is the problem*. Goons are hiding behind privacy to threaten a reporter and his family? Let's give them more privacy, that'll fix it!

HN can be very predictable sometimes, but hey, at least nobody ITT has suggested Rust yet.

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

#847

Post by ashtonshears »

holmesworcester wrote: post #796
margalabargala wrote: post #624

As someone generally against gambling, I think there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting. The issue of bribing/threatening a sports player to throw a game has existed for over a century. It's not a new problem. The only thing special about Polymarket is the expansion of surface area. My preferred solution would be to just ban it all, or…

If it becomes commonplace for existing prediction markets to get undermined by this kind of manipulation, won't that just be an opportunity for people to create better prediction markets that are less vulnerable to manipulation? And doesn't that just mean more resources and energy is going into solving the problem of determining the truth of past events (and, as a result given that these are prediction markets, the l…

Perhaps, we overestimate the capabilities of capital markets

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

#848

Post by blacksmith_tb »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #798
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're asking the wrong question, in a free society (supposedly) people are allowed to do whatever they want by default. They're not perimtted to do things, they're forbidden from doing specific things. Is gambling a neg-negative? why do you care? how is that relevant? Things shouldn't be forbidden because of net impact, specific harm needs to be outlined and addressed. Most of the time, there are more specific probl…

That's a strong libertarian position I think few would agree with. A similar case would be fentanyl - what harm does it do to me if people are dying on the sidewalk from overdoses? Well, the cumulative impact of that on society is considered negative enough that we've outlawed its recreational use. That argument of course doesn't apply equally to my neighbor taking shrooms, which doesn't have any impact, go ahead. The question is if you see gambling as closer to fent than to shrooms - I would suggest that it has a significant blast radius[1].

1: https://commonwealthbeacon.org/by-the-numbers/sports-betting...

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

#849

Post by arduanika »

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…

Now we're discussing "audio frequencies"? My gosh, you really are off the deep end, aren't you.

If you want to effect change, then state your critique precisely, or not at all. Your looney top-level comment has derailed what should be a discussion of how to reign in Polymarket, because you've overstated your case, messed up your references to authority, and apparently you've slandered Aleister f*cking Crowley, too, such that his defenders are arguing about him here, instead of about how to reign in Polymarket.

When you make your side appear detached from all sense and reason, you are functionally no better than controlled opposition.

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

#850

Post by thayne »

derf_ wrote: post #679
margalabargala wrote: post #624

As someone generally against gambling, I think there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting. The issue of bribing/threatening a sports player to throw a game has existed for over a century. It's not a new problem. The only thing special about Polymarket is the expansion of surface area. My preferred solution would be to just ban it all, or…

> 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…

Seems like bets on missile strikes would violate that...
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