Comment by epolanski
10 hours ago
And don't you see the other part of the medal?
That there are economical incentives to make it happen just to make money?
Such events have little-to-no "wisdom of the crowds" those events decided by a handful of people. And their consequences catastrophic.
What if there was a derivative for whether you will be hit by a car tomorrow?
What would you say if there was a contract on whether your county will burst in flames this month?
Are you happy because you can hedge this event, or don't you realize the obvious peril?
> That there are economical incentives to make it happen just to make money?
I don't see how there is. The liquidity in a prediction market is not high enough to compensate for the expense of going to war.
The war was going to happen irregardless of the prediction market. The prediction market only let us know when it was going to happen with some hours to spare.
Ballistic missiles are pretty expensive. You'd have to bid a lot of money for it to be worthwhile to shoot them at a country just to make money on Polymarket.
If there was a prediction market for whether I'll be hit by a car tomorrow, and it was lucrative enough that it would actually be worth anyone's time to deliberately hit me with a car, I'd stay home and bid on "no". Pretty sure I'd make more than enough to cover the cost of ordering pizza.
There are already perverse incentives to commit arson, like insurance. And it's entirely possible that prediction markets can make insurance even more cost-effective.