Except these markets were usually more accurate then polls. Don’t get me wrong, I hate them and I laughed at people betting that Trump would receive more votes. But the market was right, not the polls.
To avoid submitting entirely to the logic of prediction markets (one of the many challenges facing the political media in the coming year, I think), we should be clear that this isn’t really an argument about what happened. Rather, the sheer weirdness of what actually ended up happening — and the haze of uncertainty and mis- and disinformation that surrounded it, including from principal actors — overcame the predictive powers of whoever had written Polymarket’s rules in the first place.
The fundamental problem with any “predictive” system is that once you can generate a financial return on a result, you have a financial incentive to influence the result. Consequently, a betting app that allows you to reap an enormous windfall by betting contrary to the current trend will produce bad-faith actors willing to realize the results in defiance of the democratic system.
Imagine, hypothetically, if everyone participating in the Brooks Brothers Riot had bets outstanding on the way Florida’s EC votes would be awarded. Or, even more sinister, imagine a Supreme Court Justice betting on the results of a SC decision.
Your comment is well written, but completely unrelated. I said the prediction markets are more accurate then polls (I even found a paper for you), and you reply with an article about “How sometimes it’s hard to determine a result of a bet”, which isn’t applyable here, since election results are well defined. You then continue to rant about predictive markets, but nothing about their accuracy. And BTW, I agree with you.
If I’m wrong, could you please clarify, how their accuracy is connected to their morality?
This is a screenshot of a betting app. You can easily influence these numbers with large bets. This is just viral marketing masquerading as hopium
It’s not actually a poll or anything real…
Except these markets were usually more accurate then polls. Don’t get me wrong, I hate them and I laughed at people betting that Trump would receive more votes. But the market was right, not the polls.
What Good Are Prediction Markets If Nobody Can Agree on What Happened? Polymarket’s epistemic trap
(archive.is)
The fundamental problem with any “predictive” system is that once you can generate a financial return on a result, you have a financial incentive to influence the result. Consequently, a betting app that allows you to reap an enormous windfall by betting contrary to the current trend will produce bad-faith actors willing to realize the results in defiance of the democratic system.
Imagine, hypothetically, if everyone participating in the Brooks Brothers Riot had bets outstanding on the way Florida’s EC votes would be awarded. Or, even more sinister, imagine a Supreme Court Justice betting on the results of a SC decision.
Your comment is well written, but completely unrelated. I said the prediction markets are more accurate then polls (I even found a paper for you), and you reply with an article about “How sometimes it’s hard to determine a result of a bet”, which isn’t applyable here, since election results are well defined. You then continue to rant about predictive markets, but nothing about their accuracy. And BTW, I agree with you.
If I’m wrong, could you please clarify, how their accuracy is connected to their morality?
When you have people with a finger on the scale making the bets, of course they will be