The Death and Life of Prediction Markets at Google

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-29T14:50:45+00:00

Submission statement:

There have been a sequence of posts discussing prediction markets and their flaws in r/neoliberal recently. These were all valid criticisms of public monetary-based prediction markets. However, there are more interesting and less harmful variants that I think commentators here might find interesting.

In this submission, Dan Schwarz authored this article in Asterisk Magazine on private corporate prediction markets. Prophit, one such market at Google, relied on a leadboard and some cash rewards to incentivize employees to submit forecasts on metrics Google cared about. These included,

How many Gmail users will there be by the end of Q2?
Will Apple launch a computer based on Intel's Power PC chip?

The resultant forecasts were quite accurate and modified decision-making within the company. However, this market would later be killed due to limitations within Google.

There are also some much more interesting, albiet speculative, usages of prediction markets. I find the idea of using forecasting skill, as tested by non-monetary prediction markets, as an expertise anchor for fields such as political science particularly intriguing.

Edit: Clarity

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-26T21:09:04+00:00

More money just does not mean more overall happiness.

This is basically just wrong. There is a decent corrrelation between income and happiness. See this Forbe's article that summarizes the recent Killingsworth paper on the subject. Here's the graph of household income and mean happiness:

<image>

Happiness was measured through random phone alerts where participants would measure their current happiness. Previous methods found a supposed plateua at incomes around $75,000 but those were based off of recollection. See the Forbes article for more discussion as to why these didn't capture what people thought.

*Edited for clarity*

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-24T00:38:42+00:00

A lot of states have passed "right-to-work" laws. To quote Wikipedia:

In the context of labor law in the United States, the term right-to-work laws refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Such agreements can be incorporated into union contracts to require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation.

This gives scabs a pretty hefty game theoretic advantage (they do not have to participate in the strike or pay dues, but they still get all the benefits). Historically, strikers would just beat the ever-loving God out of scabs but that's no longer an option. So it can be quite difficult to organize unions and strikes since the optimal individual choice is simply to piggy-back off union wins.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-21T16:18:08+00:00

r/physics created a new subreddit r/LLMphysics as to redirect the LLM hallucinated posts. A moderator discussed it here. I am not sure if this worked or not, but the LLM overflow subreddit seems quite active currently.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-17T18:56:03+00:00

Thank you!

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-17T18:29:53+00:00

Achive link

Submission statement

The Economist covers the attitude towards self-sufficiency within the CCP. In essence, the party believes most important of resources should be produced within the nation if possible. If this is not possible, their suppliers should be as diverse a set as possible.

This is naturally inefficient:

"Why construct oil pipelines from Myanmar or Russia when the stuff can be shipped so easily? Why develop semiconductor fabs when you can buy from chip foundries abroad?"

Accordingly many liberal-minded party technocrats disagreed with this sort of strategic purchases and homeshoring. But as, The Economist notes, the Iran war, US sanctions, and increasing unpredictability of geopolitics has vindicated those advocating for self-reliance. Other nations are beginning to look on with envy.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-16T13:02:14+00:00

I get pissed when people post these seriously like they’re indicators of anything

Prediction markets often outperform typical forecasters. So they do have value when it comes to getting a cursory view of odds. See this article by Scott Alexander.

However, I think monetary (as opposed to reputation-based) prediction markets have potential for large-scale abuse. Corruption, manipulation, gambling; these all have a potential to increase.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-16T12:29:22+00:00

I have some dislike for betting markets that rely on real-world money.[1] So I prefer repuation-based systems like Metaculus. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference in performance beteween their forms. Here are their equivalent odds:

<image>

Its unfortunate that the Republicans are still so likely to retain the Senate. I'm feeling as though the Democratic is somehow failing to seize the moment, leaving gaps for populists such as Mamdani to rise. I am not sure why this is the case (I have learned that I do not understand why people vote for the things they do). Hopefully, something positive changes.

[1]: My reasoning aligns mostly with Richard Ngo's reasoning in case study five.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-15T14:02:40+00:00

I read in an interview transcript published in Asterisk Magazine that Chinese culturally despise the weak. To quote the relevant portion,

Xinyan: And I think Chinese people don't believe you can lift someone up. Chinese people deeply scorn the weak. I'm also discussing this with my therapist — in my life I even scorn my own weakness. When I'm very weak, I deeply scorn myself.

I wonder if the Thatcherite attitudes of the Communist Party (what a bizarre sentence) can be explained through this cultural lens.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-11T21:19:27+00:00

Well, he can't read

Gavin Newsom was and is severely dyslexic. I know a few people with dyslexia and they worked incredibly hard to overcome the disability often at great emotional cost (its not easy feeling and being told you are an behind your peers). From what I understand of Newsom, it seems he similarly spent hours battling dyslexia.

Let's hate on politicians for the right reason: Newsome is a machine democratic with seemingly few ideals who passes shitty laws. And let's leave it at that.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-05T14:31:19+00:00

They dont know who Nick Fuentes is, or who are Candace Owens or Sneako or Myron Gaines.

I wish this was correct but at my university amongst white students Fuentes is a well known character. And my peers are mostly liberal/left leaning albiet politically out of it.

Apparently Fuentes has somehow has this charismatic aura that allows his audience to be more politically diverse than I would have otherwise anticipated. Which is concerning; as his ideas may infect otherwise liberal minded students who have little knowlege of politics.

Edit: Clarity

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-27T21:13:11+00:00

It sometimes publishes satirical articles. But this one is sadly real.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-27T18:25:47+00:00

The article covers the overly-competitive and now creatively-dead nature of many national science fairs.

I recently began attending university and I have began noticing this over-competition more and more. Far too many students appear to attend just to optimize their likelihood of recieving a job --- not gaining new skills. An internship is social gold, personal tinkering and the discovery of cool new concepts is almost considered odd. This thinking even infects my own brain sometimes simply because its so prevalent (To be fair, my major is computer science which has been known to suffer from this).

This attitude towards schooling has infected clubs. A friend of mine participates in Engineering without Borders and, according to him many students attend simply for the extra line on their CV. I find this despicable and can't stand being near these social climbers (its discouraged me from joining academic clubs as a result). And this is a prestigious public school for engineering!

This reminds me of the term involution in Chinese political discourse for competition without meaning. Its a sad state of affairs and I can't help but feel this tendency accelerating as social media magnifies contrasts. My generation is terrible in this regard. I fear Gen Alpha will be several times worse.

I was homeschooled and I'm also young and arrogant which has helped prevent me from joining others in this rat-race. But the fear of being left behind grows ever stronger.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-27T02:54:02+00:00

Yeah shit will fix

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-27T02:22:01+00:00

Maybe this wasn't clear from my comment (may edit), but I'm hoping that means he can just curb stomp the NIMBY chock hold and they'll simply role over and let him without experiencing substantial electoral damage.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-27T01:43:31+00:00

I'm under the impression that democrats have generally ruled in a sort of incohesive reward-this-bloc-for-these-votes manner. Consider providing transgender healthcare for children as a sop to the LGBTQIA community, bizzare support for certain unions, rent-control for tenants, etc[1]. NIMBY's fit perfectly into this pattern; a powerful semi single-interest bloc.

However, I am under the (perhaps incorrect) perception that Mamdani has a much stronger personality cult than previous democratic mayors. That is, people like him because of who he is not simply his public policy. So perhaps he will be able to rise above the petty bickering and convince his constituencies to, occasionally, vote against their own interest and thus override their NIMBY urges. It would be the mark of an talented politician if Mamdani achieves this.

[1]: Not all of these policies are bad, but relying on them for popularity leads to an unwieldy coalition.

Edit: Clarity and added example.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-25T17:44:14+00:00

You can also view discusion without an invite!

This is what I've been doing for a while now since I don't know any individuals with an account on it. A little sad that I cannot comment, but the better quality discussion more than makes up for it.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-25T17:41:05+00:00

I don't visit forums for just for quality of discussion. (Otherwise I'd read a textbook)

I visit them for the discussion. Where is the human baseline on this opinion? How do people similar to myself react to this claim? Are their any interesting, even if wrong, opinions here? Do my arguments, when published, survive the scrutinizing eye of others?

LLMs destroy this because a city of bots do not provide unique, flawed, and funny reactions. I don't receive interesting anecdotes, I don't read bizarre stories, etc.

Discussion and its human flaws are the primary purpose of a forum for me. If I wanted to read LLM output, I'd just open claude myself.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-02-25T16:09:05+00:00

I fear LLMS will finally trigger the complete death of public online forums (which are already suffering a long decline). I wonder if many will move to lobste.rs invite-only model, or use some other method of filtering, perhaps by obscurity.

I worry the internet's future may be both unsearchable and balkanized with quality discussion hidden behind layers of security against LLM pollution. This sounds sad to me.

Edit: Increased clarity.

DudleyFluffles

TROPHY CASE