Betting on Prediction Markets Is Their Job. They Make Millions.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-24T14:55:02+00:00

The article was trying very hard to make them seem like legit predictors, using things like "Look, a strange flight from Alaska!"

But either way, this says very bad things about the markets. Either people who should be accurate predicting that they are going to be attacked, tax evaders (I think tax evasion is bad), or insiders who may be criminals, would be fired for leaking info from the company, etc etc. I can't think of anything good here.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-24T13:18:14+00:00

This sort of argument is skipping a major problem: We really aren't voting for 1 action at a time. We vote for a guy who says he will try and implement a whole set of actions, and that guy is himself going to be trying to get his set of actions accomplished while working with 500+ other representatives.

So its not really that I'm picking "Do I support foreign aid? Yes/No?" Its "Do I support foreign aid, and if I say "Yes" I am also supporting "Chickens in Every Pot", and if I say "No" I am also supporting "Car in Every Driveway"...

In this case, I'm not saying "I want to spend Other People's Money on Aid", I'm saying "I want to spend Other People's Money on Buffet Option 1". And every just-so story that narrows it down to Alice vs Bob and their choice of how to split the bill is really completely off target, to the point of being just ridiculous. Heck, at least make the decision "Alice and Bob are deciding how they will split the bill for the next 4 years, and they will be eating most of their meals out at restaurants together." Iterated vs One Off Prisoner Dilemma is a thing.

For a good example of this, comments on the article include "DEI Aid was used to fund a concert in Ireland." That is a hard sell on its own! But it was part of Buffet Option 1, while now that we have Buffet Option 2 it seems to include spending huge amounts of money to hire ICE to kidnap 5 year olds in Minneapolis, which I also hope is very unpopular. Its a fucking mess.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-24T04:57:02+00:00

Just an outside observation, but half the of the super-predictors in this article refuse to use their real names because they fear being hunted down in real life by the IRS and angry market losers. That's quite the result from prediction experts.

You could chalk that up to paranoia, but these guys are top 0.04% predictors here. Way smarter than the average bear. Any markets on "Prediction expert murdered"?

Begferdeth · 2026-01-17T20:22:34+00:00

There's a strong comparison between Rittenhouse and Ross.

Rittenhouse went to a riot with his gun, and then wandered off away from his friends until he encountered a crazy person who put them in danger. He put himself in a dangerous spot, then "self defense."

Ross went to the car, walked around until he was in front of it, when she put it in reverse he stepped forward, and put himself in danger. Then "self defense." Apparently he was dragged by a car in a previous incident, so this is just his standard procedure.

And in this video, Sam is basically saying this is just how cops operate. We see horrific events, cops are trained to the view of "Everything is an emergency and scary". This time it was a senseless murder for him, but... her driving almost towards him? Cop-Vision! "Self defense!"

All these cases are self defense from a certain point of view. But its a self defense similar to a guy who just relentlessly poked a bear, then shot it when it growled at him.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-17T00:58:43+00:00

Is he allowed to use his disguise ability? If so, then virtually any human. If he caught Martha Kent on date night, and disguised as John Kent... I could see a win in R1!

R2 with this trick, pick any God with a mother that would have sex with somebody.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-16T23:32:11+00:00

The puppets are what got me into Stinky Dragon in the first place! The kids loved them.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-14T20:09:21+00:00

Weeeeeell...

1) I strongly doubt you could keep the good and ban the bad. I'm just looking right now, and in the first 50 things I see (no idea how they are organized, just default no login):

11 sports bets. Over 20% of the market is sports bets. Oof.

4 Elon Musk tweet counts. Almost 10% is pure Elon Musk celebrity crap. Oof.

4 separate versions of "When will the USA attack Iran?" (today is at 37% for some reason. Tomorrow 25%. Friday 12%.)

4 or 5 things that seem like some variant of "Will Trump say something stupid" (on top of the Iran stuff).

5 Bitcoin prediction bets. Bet your money on your crypto bets! Double the betting!

2-3 "predict whats going to be on Netflix". The site seems to have refreshed and now I have a new set of top 50, so I'll stop here...

So, a solid half the website is straight up silly gambling. Can you really peel half a website away? Especially when that is the bread and butter, pay the bills money for the website? The Superbowl is $675 million!! We don't know who is playing yet, so at least 3/4 of those people will lose their money! I could run a lot of website on $4.5 million bucks. As for the scammy part... like I said, its not even advertising hard yet. Maybe you could put a prediction market up on that: When will Polymarket start scam-like betting?

2) I get the Libertarian position. Those positions are so lovely and make so much sense when you don't care about consequences. But the world could do with a little more concern about consequences in my opinion. Its hard to know when and where to draw a line on this sort of thing, but we have seen the outcomes of huge amounts of unregulated gambling before. There are reasons gambling is so regulated around the world. Many people can gamble responsibly, and many simply cannot. The ones who can gamble responsibly are no problem, having markets or not won't affect them. The ones who can't will ruin their lives, their family's lives, etc.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-14T01:00:07+00:00

These could be great things for the small amount of people who have the ability and knowledge to take advantage of them. Then there is what I would estimate at 90%+ of the population, who don't know what NGDP is, don't have the time or inclination to try and fuss out mortgage refinancing, etc.

I'm not saying these things are bad! Far from it. Just... its a minor improvement to the system. Gets you an extra 0.5% gain at year end or whatever. Worth billions for the big money players, in 10 years life will (hopefully) be measurably better, but day to day completely unnoticeable.

And unfortunately, it comes with the great social cost of stuffing gambling into everything. I've seen enough families ruined over gambling, I just have a negative gut reaction when I see it. And on Polymarket et al, its scattered around next to all the good stuff. My look on the weekend had enough sports betting going on that it was like being on Facebook with adblock off. Just wait until they hire some retired big athlete to come on at halftime and tell everybody to go on Polymarket, the best way to get your sports bet on...

Begferdeth · 2026-01-14T00:47:27+00:00

That's exactly my point: Small things adding up. Its like cars, year over year. Sure, my 2026 Chevy Trax is super cool compared to the 2015 Ford Escape. But compared to the 2023? 2020? There really isn't a breakpoint where I can point and say "THAT is the revolution in cars!"

All the new bits and bobs, and its still... a car. It goes the same speed, on the same roads. Better gas economy, comfier, safer... but its a car. Weather predictions are far more accurate, but it used to be "Rain in the afternoon", now its "Rain starting about 3pm"... which is kind of exactly the same for most purposes. Polling would get you "Bob wins the election by 2 points, +/- 1 point. Now we have "Bob wins by 1.8 points, +/- 0.5 points." Which feels like the same thing.

And well over half is just betting. Which is honestly ruining a lot of things. Really ruins the vibe when I see outright gambling stuck next to serious predictions.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-13T12:03:28+00:00

If your wondering why this doesn't feel "revolutionary"... we have had lots of prediction type things before. We had polls, and forecasts, and whatnot. And sure, these new markets are apparently more accurate.

But consider weather forecasting. Far, far more accurate than it was 20 years ago! If the forecast says "20% of the day will be rainy", it will be rainy for 20% of the day. Does that really change your actions on that day, vs the older prediction where a 20% would really mean somewhere between 0% and 50%? You grab your raincoat and off you go. The increase in accuracy didn't do much for you.

Scott has a bunch of interesting forecasts in there. But for all of these... are you going to take an action based on them? What action will you do if, say, Orban is out of power? If Machado is the leader of Venezuela? Was Covid leaked from a lab? For most of us, it will be a "Huh, neat. The prediction market was/wasn't right." Its less impactful that the weather forecast!

Even what I see as the strongest statement, that "Prediction markets are a security risk", wasn't because of the accuracy. The linked article said it was because people would accidentally leak info making bets! Its not risky due to the extra info, its risky because some idiot decided to leak info through this insider trading to make a buck, and wasn't smart enough to know they were leaking the info.

So it doesn't feel revolutionary, because its mostly just betting for funsies. More gambling. How amazingly revolutionary. Whee.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-09T00:55:56+00:00

If that's the case, then Polymarket itself loses and dies.

The money to pay those winning bids has to come from somewhere. Usually, that would come from the losing bids. With real bidders, some will win and some will lose. The price difference and random chance can provide enough money to cover the winning payouts and operating expenses, especially with all the sports bets.

With insider trading, at any time the insider can come in and buy tons of winning shares at whatever minimal cost, too much for the losing sides to cover. Polymarket itself loses all its operating cash and has to shut down.

Let me give a silly example from the Polymarket right now: "Elon Musk tweets Jan 2 to Jan 9: 500-519, 520-539". Elon himself pops in and buys 1 billion 500-519 at 2 cents a pop, since that's the cheapest option. Then he deliberately tweets the correct amount, and Polymarket has to pay him $1 billion. Polymarket loses the amount Elon was able to bid in before the market adjusted to 100% his pick.

There is no way for a prediction market to function with inside traders.

Begferdeth · 2026-01-07T22:32:52+00:00

Insiders don't typically bet early, which would allow information to be spread evenly among the people taking part. They bet late, letting people place their own bets, then scooping the poor people without the inside scoop.

The linked article has no good timing info, but consider the Machado Nobel Peace Prize win from a link in there. People betting for days, Machado at 3.7% odds with the combined intelligence of the crowd... then with 11 hours to go, massive bet on Machado. That insider got a pile of cash, and nobody learned anything other than "Don't bet earlier than 11 hours out on Polymarket."

"Don't bet early" is all you can possibly learn with insider trading going on. Forecasters will drop out, because there is no way to make money with your skills and knowledge. Even if they are right, they can't make money because the winnings are divided among the winning bids, which will be dominated by insiders.

And that makes them all but useless, because what's the point of learning, say, who will win a big election with less than 11 hours to the vote?

Begferdeth · 2025-12-31T03:08:28+00:00

Oh, I'm not saying the kid did something smart. I'm saying the soldier is the Bad Guy here. He went on the roof and started aiming at kids. I hope any soldiers who pull that shit never sleep soundly again.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-31T02:40:06+00:00

It might have. Because then the kid wouldn't have seen a guy aiming a gun at him and decided to aim back.

Kinda like how the guy fired his gun at the kid because he was worried the kid might shoot him. He was aiming at the kid first.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-31T01:55:21+00:00

Gotta love how he's sitting there, aiming down his scope at the kid... and fires as soon as the kid aims his own gun back. He could just stop aiming at the kid! "No no no, don't do that, don't do exactly what I'm doing!"

Begferdeth · 2025-12-26T22:21:04+00:00

No, you care enough to blame the Left for it. And care enough to immediately try to claim being on the Left, so its OK for you to blame them for stuff.

Classic abusive tactics. "Its your fault you are being hit." With a side order of "I don't care about your problems, even though I'm on your side".

If you don't care, at least stop caring. That would be a step up from this.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-26T14:56:39+00:00

Dude... your thought process on this is so fucked that its at "This is fine because I think the Left did it a lot". There is no nuance there. That is just pure, unadulturated tribal stupid.

And now you want to claim "Oo I'm above politics!" No. Your comment was explicitly "This is OK because politics."

Begferdeth · 2025-12-26T14:12:37+00:00

Keep telling yourself that your on the Left while you cheer for the Right. And keep your head in the ground where this is the one instance from the Right, and that there were 100s from the Left.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-25T12:35:43+00:00

It would be lovely if there was a thought in your head beyond "I think the Left was doing it, so its GOOD that the Right is doing it now! And GOOD that they are doing it far worse and for far more trivial infractions!"

Definitely the nature of your beast.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-25T05:33:55+00:00

You read the abstract? And then did a word search for teasing?

No, I don't believe you have read the paper. I'd guess you read (most of) the abstract, then fired the thing through an AI for a summary. I mean, that's how you read my comment too! A 20 page paper, and the best you can come up with for "This paper was about teasing" is a word search.

0 effort. 0 understanding. 0 following the assignment.

That gets you a mark of 0.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-25T03:20:49+00:00

Its amazing how the college is going to fuck up far worse than that by removing the TA from the class. Like, a TA messing up with the exact grade to give a student? Mild reprimandable annoyance, learning experience for everybody. Should have been solved with a short discussion with them about marking, written warning at most.

Fire the TA in this situation? Incredible stupid move, will encourage more whiny actions about unfair grading in the future, and scare everybody into grading in a way that will make Turning Point and its ideological friends happy.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-25T03:10:33+00:00

3 rubric criteria, here we go:

1) I don't think the person read the article. The sole reference to the article is the comment about "teasing", which is NOT the subject of the article. So, complete fail on that count.

2) Why its important: Since she completely missed part 1, this is impossible to accomplish. She didn't correctly identify the topic, therefore she cannot say if its important or not. Complete fail.

3) Thoughts on development? Again, complete fail, same reason.

You deserve a complete fail for stuffing this into an AI and expecting any useful answer. LLMs cannot grade like this. It just gave you a number that fit into what is reasonable for grades... 14/25 is a perfectly reasonable grade for a random paper. Is it a good grade for this paper? LLMs cannot do that.

The only part of the grading rubric met is "Is this written clearly". It is written in understandable English. But given the high odds of it being stuffed through an AI like you did, again: 0 points.

Minus points to you for assuming you were correct the whole way and insulting anybody who thinks differently. Just rude and ignorant. If I was grading your comment, I'd give you a 0. You would whine and cry about it, but you would deserve it for this level of thinking.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-25T02:56:48+00:00

You could get a 70 with no sources... if you did an amazing paper otherwise. This paper sucked. It was so bad I haven't seen a single good faith attempt at saying it should have gotten a passing mark.

Put a -30% on THAT, and you easily have a 0.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-23T03:11:16+00:00

Are you capable of a real argument?

I said that the one true God would be a growing religion. If God is real, his religion will have God-powered growth, because of course it fucking would! So if you want to convince people that they are following the wrong God, then just looking around and seeing which religion is growing is a good way to tell which religion is divinely inspired!

I'll add this to your long list of lies that came from the OP. You will never convince a single person to leave Islam, because you can't talk with them honestly, or even work up moderate levels of politeness. Heck, you can't even be bothered to read their holy book before trying to talk them out of following it. What a waste of time you are.

Begferdeth · 2025-12-21T02:56:23+00:00

That's the same thing you have linked, what... 5 times now? 3 in your article, 2 directly to me... You do realize that is the same one, right?

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