Comment by themafia
1 day ago
> is weather prediction markets
Humans can, and do, manipulate the weather. There's actually international treaties against doing it.
> Hundreds are creating their own weather prediction models
Weather is chaotic. You don't run a model once and use the result. You run it hundreds of times and average the results. You also need really high quality real time data to be fed into the system to achieve any sort of accuracy, which, is not something any of these hundreds could do on their own.
> markets could be a net good
You can already sell weather predictions. You can just hang a shingle and do it directly. Why do we need a third party gambling apparatus involved?
> Why do we need a third party gambling apparatus involved?
Wisdom of crowds > wisdom of individual firms, also a market solution actually would work in this case imo. Manipulating the weather seems easy enough to detect and much more expensive than any benefit you'd get, and there aren't really any negative externalities.
> Wisdom of crowds > wisdom of individual firms
I doubt the utility of this simple aphorism. Primarily "the crowd" has a strong bias and would only consist of people willing to take the time to put a financial stake on their position.
> Manipulating the weather seems easy enough to detect
What are you basing this off of?
> and much more expensive than any benefit you'd get
Cloud seeding is not particularly expensive. The problem is the people performing this work may never interact with your market. You're literally playing a rigged game without any clue.
> and there aren't really any negative externalities.
The folly of man in a single sentence.