Comment by echoangle
2 days ago
Yes, OOP might have chosen a suboptimal example here. But for general newsworthy events, people aren’t going to be in positions to manually make them happen. And no person in a position to start a war would do it to affect a Polymarket bet.
The prediction markets aren't yet at sufficient scale to purchase a war, you mean. People start wars for money all the time though. If they become of sufficient scale, people will purchase wars on them.
There's already lots of examples where they are of sufficient scale, like paying the press secretary to shut up after 64 minutes. Or paying someone to falsify ISWs map of the front line in Ukraine.
> But for general newsworthy events, people aren’t going to be in positions to manually make them happen.
Many newsworthy events (and even more events that actually reach prediction markets, many of which are at best marginally newsworthy) are actions ultimately pivot on a human decision, so the first part isn’t true.
> And no person in a position to start a war would do it to affect a Polymarket bet.
Are you saying “no one would start a war with personal financial gain being part of the motivation”, or “it is impossible for the payoff of a prediction market bet to be of sufficient magnitude to alter the calculus in even the tiniest iota in that case”?
Because the first seems extremely clearly false, and the second seems improbable in the case where the first is false.
> And no person in a position to start a war would do it to affect a Polymarket bet.
No person in position to start a war and to influence economic policies would become a crypto scammer... erm wait...
Also, the crypto scammer in chief’s son is on the board of both major prediction market platforms.
Causing real world problems with prediction markets would probably be about ego and trolling.
I also find a clear political bias in the naming of some of the markets, but that could be simply because of the demography of the user base.
I can see someone in the Trump admin absolutely using a betting market when they can influence the outcome. At the least I'd also bet that someone in the T admin was the person who knew about Maduro being captured.
...but many people in positions where they can start a war or cause some other highly visible event of any sort probably will start turning to Polymarket to make money in the course of their work
Which makes the prediction market more accurate.
Until the tail starts wagging the dog.
As long as we realize that prediction market accuracy is not all we care about.
See also: one can have very high economic efficiency with very high inequality, war, disease, misery, etc.
"You provide the gambling, I'll provide the war"
Not really, for the same reason entrapment isn't usually seen as an accurate way to gather information for law enforcement. See also Goodhart's law and overfitting.
Eh… sort of? In a sense, they become less accurate, because the prediction market is the causative event, not an independent observer.
> And no person in a position to start a war would do it to affect a Polymarket bet.
Are you fucking kidding? Based just on current events, that is absolutely not a statement you can make without at least trying to prove it.
If you do try to prove that you will fail as the idea that people would start wars for profit is as old as wars.
Just evaluate the sentence you've just created. How many people exist who have the capability to start wars or influence the start of wars? It's a lot. What else do you know about these people and their motivations?
It isn’t just the people who can start a war. It’s also normal people who can.
Imagine if 10 million people bet on starting a war vs 5 million who say no war. Those net 5 million people are going on social media saying why the war is justified. They’ll vote in war mongers. They’ll support the military. The bet literally influences the result. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.