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Comment by thatcat | Hacker News Reader

This is the whole thing about polymarket, whoever writes the original bet can lawyer it to create a misleading impression of probabilities by defining an overly narrow or vague victory condition that they will interpret to their benefit to make more money.

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The conditions are public and (as far as I know) immutable, though. Getting language lawyered is part of the risk of taking such bets, which is why it's probably a bad idea for most laypeople to do it, except if they're hedging some other investment or something similar.

i think its supposed to be fun and if you get rules lawyered then you get to complain about it and have people agree with you at parties that you should have won the bet

i dont think it is intended to be used as a meaningful investment platform, or even a serious gambling establishment like an actual casino.

its whole angle is "wouldnt it be funny if you could bet on ____" and then you can

Unfortunately, no it's supposed to be a predictive platform that uses market forces to reduce bias.

they can pitch themselves however they want, I am thinking along the lines of where I believe it works as a product

Yea, but to get an idea of how events will be decided you need to look at similar past bets.

The creator of the event doesn't resolve it, I thought

Yeah I think one could easily argue that the special military operation in Venezuela was intended to gain control over the country. Trump literally stated that his team, in particular lil Marco, would be running the country. Of course Rubio walked that back a little, explaining that we only have "leverage" (via Maduro's trial/pardoning), but that still is within the terms of the bet.

I think this is called 'being specific'

Contra proferentem or caveat aleator? That is the question.

"against the proffer-er" vs "gambler beware"

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