Betting on the Pope was the original prediction market
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A couple weeks ago, on a flight, I watched the movie Conclave (2024) which is about the process of selecting the Pope, in a modern context. I thought it was surprisingly good, but felt like a warning call for the next papal conclave as it illustrated how the power some of these individuals face can corrupt. Fascinating to think how this process would have played out in 16th Century Italy.
When they say “reduced by lot” then mean by a lottery? By that same original boy or something else?
They also talked about needing approval from electors, I assume that was from the previous small pool. Can’t exactly determine who they mean.
They just wanted a member of the Aristocrat to be in charge is the point. An inauguration validated with whatever appears like merit (but the whole thing is rigged since only one type can ever win - the aristocrat (the entire pool is aristocrats)).
Self selected group :)
Have fun with Doge.
In some ways this is new, but it’s also possibly a reversion to the mean on how it’s worked historically? One difference is that in the 16th century, the impact of the Pope on day to day life was higher (at least in Catholic Europe).
Starting in the 18th century the Papal States began to be chipped away by European powers, and this culminated in Pope Pius IX losing all control political control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Since then the papacy's temporal power has been limited to the Vatican City, along with the moral weight of the position.
Not so. The mass media have instantly made every sneeze of the pope common knowledge, or common fake news. In prior centuries, the pope's prominence in the consciousness of daily life was low. He was a remote figure. You wouldn't hear of his death for weeks.
I’m not Catholic, but I do think that it makes sense for the next pope to be one.
It's a big deal x)
It’s the first time I’ve encountered any information about how a new pope is selected. Period.
As a not-dumb person, I realize it’s just a movie. But the basic premise of being cordoned off from the outside world, voting until someone is chosen, with the voting going on for days and signaled through smoke by burning the ballets - I assume that basic premise is at least mostly accurate?
Edit: Indeed, after some basic googling, the premise of the movie seems to line up with the basic premise of how a pope was selected centuries ago.
It's not really a secret how a pope is chosen, it's just not something most people are interested enough to look up (there's a missing "in" in that sentence but I couldn't decide where to put it).
Robert Harris wrote the book and also wrote Fatherland, Enigma and Pompeii. Those are three different books but I'd definitely read a book with that single title.
Some might even say the film lacks courage, both by taking no stance on the issue and by presenting a scenario that only vaguely matches the hot-button American political issue.
just to be clear, the article offers no evidence that there was not prior gambling art than the papal enclaves. cockfighting, bullfighting, gladiators, horseracing, was there no organized betting? in terms of prediction markets specifically, once there is organized betting, did it never extend to "current events"?
just as a slightly topical aside, the market for "oil drilling" is mathematically equivalent to a (stock) options market. it doesn't take much for markets to uncover probability and statistics.
Also dice games were popular for private betting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
This may be an obvious thing that everyone else has caught onto, but... if I were to place a bet against someone dying this year (say it was someone powerful), wouldn't I essentially be offering a reward for someone to prove me wrong and make that death happen?
And isn't that exactly what's happening when people are betting on a new pope in 2025? Doesn't that heavily incentivize some violent individual to take that bet and commit murder?
Is there any similar mechanism with Polymarket for detecting, shall we say, unethical bets?
Or you could even dial the timeline back to right before the last elections, where this question could literally be about the Republicans literally losing their candidate due to sudden expiration.
My point is, if someone sees that you hedge financial well-being on e.g. you country not slipping into the civil war over the next few years, and orchestrates exactly that to profit themselves — this is not your moral failing, it's theirs, and even the "well, you kinda tempted them, technically" argument is bogus.
For example, I'm in Canada. There's a trade war going on. Every business in Canada is now having to hedge their bets for whether and how long and how bad the trade war is going to be. And we all know the trade war is being driven by one person. So yes, "what are the odds of a change in who is running the country?" is part of that risk assessment.
That's not the same thing as saying, "here's $100k if something were to happen to the man in the funny hat".
Technically, you could construe both as hedging your bets. But in the first scenario I'm just making a decision for my business. In the other, I'm offering a reward to make it happen.
Now, that being said, I could see the water getting murky for a publicly traded company that positions itself in such a way that it would truly benefit from such an event, because then a violent member of the public could buy their stock and benefit financially from commitment that violence. But that's not what we're talking about with polymarket.
Polymarket is all about tying a specific financial outcome to a specific real world event that people could choose to influence. It incentivizes outcomes. Some outcomes would be hard to influence this way. For example, I don't think any bet of any size would influence who would win an election. But if the bet was "It would be terrible if someone did X, I'm betting $$$ that no one will", then the only question is whether the $$$ is worth it to someone with the ability to commit X.
For example... let's say I bet a trillion dollars that the Canadian Communist Party (a party on the extreme fringes that few Canadians even realize exists) would NOT win the election. How would that incentive lead to them winning? What could anyone do to make that reality happen in order to claim the money?
That's not to say there aren't other ways to use money to influence an election. Of course there is. But you need to spend it in the run-up to the election, not offer it as a prize afterwards.
Am I being naive? (A: Probably. Wouldn't be the first time.)
1) Putting out a bet that a vulnerable person will take is immoral. But that’s not what we are discussing.
2) How would putting out such a bet, a call option, lead to hedging?
3) This can turn into a long ass discussion that I’m not sure you wanna go on.
> Throw a baby in water and it can swim, no naiveté anywhere.
Are you suggesting I'm doing something akin to intentionally throwing a baby in water to see if it drowns?
> 1) Putting out a bet that a vulnerable person will take is immoral. But that’s not what we are discussing.
Agreed... I'm just asking if Polymarket can effectively be used as an assassination market, and if so, isn't that a bad thing?
> 2) How would putting out such a bet, a call option, lead to hedging?
I fully admit I'm not an investment expert, so maybe I'm not using the term correctly. But in my mind, "hedging" is putting in place some type of mechanism to benefit or at least limit your losses in the case of your preferred outcome not working out. So in this scenario, a business person could simultaneously make decisions on the assumption of an ongoing trade war, as well as make other decisions that would only be beneficial in the case of the end of the trade war due to someone's demise.
(For clarity, I'm NOT advocating anyone's demise. I'm a peacenik and am not cheering for harm to fall on anyone. I'm simply discussing hypotheticals in an attempt to understand IF Polymarket could be used as an assassination market, and purely because if it could, I feel that should probably be regulated.)
> 3) This can turn into a long ass discussion that I’m not sure you wanna go on.
You're probably right, but I'm not sure where you feel this conversation is headed.
Oh, you mean Trump.
[0] https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1741301040.34_chrystiafreelan...
in case that isn't ick enough for you, here's "new world order" - in full, above they say "new order" - from the "former" Canadian Foreign Minister:
https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1741301040.34_chrystiafreelan...
Canada doesn't have nukes and has long advocated for nuclear non-proliferation. We're still not looking to have any nukes of our own.
Trump is openly calling for the annexation of our country, and has started a trade war that no Canadian political leader of any stripe wants.
Seriously just put yourself in the shoes of a Canadian. We've supported the USA in everything they've done other than the Vietnam War, and history proved us correct in taking a pass on that one.
The USA called for Free Trade. We said OK.
The USA called for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We said OK and agreed to never have nukes of our own, taking the USA at its word that it would never violate our sovereignty. Now the so-called Leader of the Free World won't shut up about taking over our country.
The USA called for NAFTA, we said OK. Then Trump tore that up and forced a new trade deal on us. We said OK again. Then he said whoever negotiated that was an idiot who did harm to the USA, to which we still say, "Ok, that's weird, it was your deal, Donald. But let's talk."
And now we're in a trade war that no one wants on our side of the border, and that a vast majority of Americans don't want either.
So yes, driven by one person: Trump.
As for the "new world order" comments, Freeland isn't talking about some conspiracy. She's literally referencing that Trump has set aflame to the existing world order (that was largely engineered by the USA) thereby creating a "new" world order. It's a poor choice of words, but I hardly take this as sufficient evidence that Canada is the belligerent nation in this trade war.
I mean, seriously, what are you even trying to say?
As a third party, I don't particularly care who's in the wrong if I'm living in the middle of a civil war.
I'm being vague because I don't want to put the idea out there about any specific individual.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3mdp5n/find_the_pope...
Spoiler warning: This contest only involves finding pictures of the Pope. No Popes were harmed by the actual or transubstantial production of Poperoni meat.
Deep Dish Question: Would putting pineapples on pizza whose crust is made of sacramental bread be considered host desecration?
https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/cardinals/pierbattista-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/10/pope-paedophil...
>As a basic if unsophisticated measure of the accuracy of the betting markets, the favorite almost always won, the only exception being in 1916 when betting initially favored the eventual loser (Hughes) but swung to even odds by the time the polls closed. In the 15 elections between 1884 and 1940, the mid-October betting favorite won 11 times (73 percent) and the underdog won only once (when in 1916 Wilson upset Hughes on the West Coast). In the remaining three contests (1884-92), the odds were essentially even throughout and the races very close.
https://users.wfu.edu/strumpks/papers/BettingPaper_final(JEP...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_VI
”Stephen is chiefly remembered in connection with his conduct towards the remains of Pope Formosus. The rotting corpse of Formosus was exhumed and put on trial, before an unwilling synod of the Roman clergy, in the so-called Cadaver Synod in January 897. Pressure from the Spoleto contingent and Stephen's fury with Formosus probably precipitated this extraordinary event.[4] With the corpse propped up on a throne, a deacon was appointed to answer for the deceased pontiff. During the trial, Formosus's corpse was condemned for performing the functions of a bishop when he had been deposed and for accepting the papacy while he was the bishop of Porto, among other revived charges that had been levelled against him in the strife during the pontificate of John VIII. The corpse was found guilty, stripped of its sacred vestments, deprived of three fingers of its right hand (the blessing fingers), clad in the garb of a layman, and quickly buried; it was then re-exhumed and thrown in the Tiber. All ordinations performed by Formosus were annulled.”
The Papacy is lit.
Edit:
"... the scandal ended in Stephen's imprisonment and his death by strangulation that summer."
The Papacy is fucking lit.
Is there a bad Pope list?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum_obscurum
The era is seen as one of the lowest points of the history of the papal office.
> Pope Theodore II (Latin: Theodorus II; 840 – December 897) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States for twenty days in December 897. His short reign occurred during a period of partisan strife... His main act as pope was to annul the recent Cadaver Synod, therefore reinstating the acts and ordinations of Pope Formosus, which had themselves been annulled by Pope Stephen VI. He also had the body of Formosus recovered from the river Tiber and reburied with honour.
Kind of a different topic but there's a growing number of people who identify as sedevacantist who don't believe Catholics have had a pope since 1958, since the papal claimants since then seen to contradict prior Catholic teachings
For example Vatican 2 taught in Dignitatis humanae:
> This Vatican synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom ... within due limits
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/vatican2/...
Obviously if I just said that I thought it was fine to steal from you unprovoked because my "religion" gives me the freedom to do so, this would come in conflict with the normal laws against stealing. Thus religious freedom has clear "limits"; Vatican 2 doesn't define where these "due" limits are and is ambiguous, opening the door to all kinds of confusion and contradiction.
Past teaching was clearer that (note that the proposition stated is considered to be "condemned" or false):
> Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, # 78: "Hence in certain regions of Catholic name, it has been laudably sanctioned by law that men immigrating there be allowed to have public exercises of any form of worship of their own." - Condemned.[58]
However it's thought by some that once it becomes apparent these contradictions exist, it will lead to a kind of reorganization of things and an election of a forthcoming pope... and the issue of gambling will present itself again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism
People get up to the wildest ideas. Thanks for sharing
Are decentralized prediction markets a net positive for transparency, or are they just incentivizing bad behavior?
As web3 and DeFi make these markets more accessible and resistant to regulation, should we be building more guardrails into the protocols themselves? Or is this an unsolvable tension in market design?
Gambling itself within reason I think was not condemned ("Gambling" in Catholic encyclopedia): https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06375b.htm