Mantic Markets – user-created prediction markets
mantic.markets
mantic.markets
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[1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-dogs-in-... (see "Mantic Everyday" section)
[2]: https://mantic.markets/about (see "How are markets resolved?" section)
Metaculus admins especially are spamming (their own site) with confused low-effort questions. They have:
1. arbitrary ways to quantify outcome thresholds. No standardization across questions.
2. Writing questions using terms the author does not actually know or misunderstands.
3. Using some random news sources as resolution criteria. Even if they are generally reliable, it just reveals how the author really didn't get into the question.
For example, war or conflict questions. A question may use some arbitrary number like 3 or 5 dead as a threshold for war. Maybe trying to figure out how subject matter experts are quantifying different conflict thresholds and what their reasoning was would be reasonable.
So the person posing a question can arbitrarily choose the answer that benefits themself financially? Just click the button that says the outcome you bet on was the correct one, then collect the money?
This seems like a non-starter for any platform that wants to be taken seriously. What am I missing?
I think the idea is that you don't get questions like on Quora, asked by internet randos. Nobody would bet on those, for exactly the reasons you brought up.
But someone who already has a following, someone who has a strong reputation in the field that the question is about, would create quite the controversy and lose much of their audience if they'd first strongly signal boost their question among said audience, and subsequently pick the wrong answer.
So I think the idea is, when choosing what questions to bet on, you're not only thinking about the question itself but also about the trustworthiness of who poses it. A bit like Kickstarter in a way. That makes it part of the risk, maybe even part of the fun.
This also means that this service will fail if they don't manage to attract sufficiently high-profile people to pose questions and signal boost them.
Most startup ideas are counter intuitive, but I appreciate the skeptical response here.
The case for user created and resolved prediction markets is that it's simple, clear, and actually what traders want.
For example, Zvi, who writes on Omicron and consults on prediction markets, recently blogged that the ideal way to resolve markets is to have Scott Alexander be the judge. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/12/02/covid-prediction-mar...
Reality gets messy and judging outcomes ultimately comes down to a person's priors and expertise. We envision a world where experts that you trust run markets on topics that you trust them on.
Right now, we have launched a play-money version of our site, and are exploring options such as moving into crypto. I will say that we love how easy and fun it is to participate with play-money, and believe that the results can be accurate.
Imagine if your favorite Twitter and Substack personalities mixed in prediction markets with their regular tweets and posts to help their analysis or make a point. It's like a Twitter poll, but with a system for accountability that drives accuracy!
We think a super-accessible site that makes accurate forecasting fun can lead to a profound impact on our knowledge and guide us to a better world. Thanks for reading!
--James
> 25% chance
Any plan to put real money behind the markets someday?
That seems much more an issue of regulation rather than capability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
You need a large, diverse crowd for this to work, and there are still major problems with it and the way they’re implementing it.
It also kind of beckons the question…did these guys just reinvent Quora?