Ah, the wonders of prediction markets... they hedge reality and they, um, change reality (#1477436, #1480442)
In the optimistic early days, people thought that prediction markets would be “truth machines,” and you could go to a prediction market’s website to learn the future. Who will be the next president, will there be a recession, who will win the Super Bowl, will Little Joe the gorilla escape again, all these crucial questions about the future could be answered — probabilistically — by the wisdom of the crowd and the invisible hand of the market. This only works if prediction markets are big enough to attract real betting interest: If you can’t make real money on prediction markets, there’s no incentive to invest time and effort in making prediction-market prices accurate.
BUT:
now that prediction markets are big, they are not purely “truth machines,” not pure observers and predictors of the future. They are truth modification machines: If you can make lots of money predicting some relatively trivial thing, you should just make the thing happen. Reality responds to incentives: If the market pays out money for an event happening, someone is going to try to make the event happen. [2] If you can make tens of thousands of dollars for warming up one little sensor, someone’s going to warm up that sensor.
Hence, some guy warming a sensor at Paris airport (#1477436).
If people are constantly going around tampering with reality to win bets, they will create glitches in reality, some of which will have bad consequences for ordinary people going about their day out in regular reality.
EXAMPLE: Will Little Joe Escape Again?
CERTAINLY someone had the idea of helping our little gorilla Houdini escape! NOT anymore. Polymarket pre-emptied it:
"I suppose the future of prediction markets is every contract listing every law that you might be violating by trying to make the event occur.""I suppose the future of prediction markets is every contract listing every law that you might be violating by trying to make the event occur."
Also a GREAT equity-in-yourself story and one on Strategy... which I'll post separately in a minute!
I thought we already knew this with the green dildos
@delete in 24 hours
GREEN DILDOS, what?!
I've clearly been off the internet too much
https://polymarket.com/event/dildo-thrown-at-wnba-game-on-august-6-13
you clearly need to spend more time on the internet
@delete in 24 hours
AAHA AAHHAHAHHA -- how in the world did that not happen?! Easiest goddamn money ever
It did happen, a whole bunch of times
It said resolved to "No"...?
That link shows a yes resolution on Thurs Aug 7. It was one of those multi-outcome bets.
Maybe that one. I recall several markets like this being open. We talked about one that was for the color of the next dildo.
Ignore ~Stacker_Sports at your own peril
apparently... -.-
There's just too much fake football going on. Can't stand that
You can't observe a system without changing it. This was always going to be the most interesting thing about prediction markets.
Once we live in a world of permissionless money, there won't even be these silly attempts to stop people from wagering on these things.
assassination markets, yeeeehaaaaaa. I'm targeting the boomers with my newfound wealth.
Jokes on you, they have all the money and can just take the heavy positions on themselves dying. The only way to make any money will be keeping them alive.