Comment by epolanski
5 hours ago
No, they would be wrong.
Have them have a prediction market on whether their house will be arsoned tomorrow or they will be hit by a car and instantly they will recognize the danger of the incentives and the bs of "information hedging based on price discovery".
Cause way worse events allow betting and profiting.
Give me a break, we're at the complete decadence of society and its intellect. Nobody can recognize right or wrong anymore let alone understand why insider trading, betting, etc, has been outlawed and prosecuted forever.
We live in the vilest era I remember since I was born, this is beyond disgusting.
I suggest that you think rationally about what you just said. Why wound anyone open a bet on "rando's house will be set on fire"? Why would they bet on "yes"? You can't present a generic case such as that without going into details about motivations and actual incentives.
Those way worse events also have a lot of extra political motivations behind it. If someone starts a war with the sole intention of winning a bet, there might worser problems than prediction markets.
The third paragraph might as well have been written by a consertive nutcase. Surely, if only you can recognize rights and wrongs, then you can objectively and undeniably prove them to this forum. On its own, it isn't much more than a appeal to tradition.
> Why wound anyone open a bet on "rando's house will be set on fire"? Why would they bet on "yes"?
Bettor is an impoverished arsonist with no morals and confidence in his anonymity.
Better question: why would a person ask a question with such a breathtakingly obvious answer?
So, you are telling me this "impoverished arsonist" opened a bet on "will this rando's house be burned?", wagered on "yes" (with what money?), other people (who?) bet on "no" and no one found it suspicious? I hope you do realize that making it a public bet exposes information, and the very subject of the bet can be used to prove intentions?
Nevermind the fact about what would happen after the crime, should it even happen. It seems this hypothetical arsonist isn't just immoral, but also incredibly stupid (and that also begs more questions, like how do they have access to prediction markets like this).
For something so "breathtakingly obvious", it seems poorly thought through.
1 reply →
Ay, didn't see your nickname, and your other posts.
Thanks for confirming what I said.
> And naysayers (which seem to be dropping from the same basket of NFT/crypto cultists) will tell you that this is about probability and information discovery.
Also, I ain't conservative, prediction markets, in their actual scope provide no benefits and plenty of wrong incentives.
The rest of your post makes no sense.
Plenty of world events have been impacted by people with misaligned interests, including by spies and double agents. Hell, wars in recent years have been started as distractions from internal political affairs.
And you want to argue to me that there's no people in position of power that may want to influence events they can bet on?
There's a reason why we prevent people in sport from betting: it's a matter of incentives. Give people incentives they will bend everything.
The fact that you can bet on a country attacking another is a tragedy.
So all you have is name calling?
Regardless, from HN's guidelines:
> Please don't post shallow dismissals
Edit: since posting this, the comment has been edited (at least the version I saw, which ended before the quote). I will write a full response later. For what's worth, I'm grateful for the longer post.