Who took the other side of that bet? I sure didn't. Participants in a market should be well aware that other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.

▲ creato 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> other participants can alter the outcome and bet accordingly.

Do you think it is acceptable that someone may have altered their behavior due to the outcome of a bet on attacking Iran?

▲ metalcrow 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What you're describing is know as an "assassination market". To my knowledge it's considered mostly a non-issue (It's talked about in good detail here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq?open=...), because you could do a lot of the same stuff with the normal stock market. If you have advance knowledge that Iran is gonna be attacked, it's just as easy to trade on that info there via oil or similar, with the added downside that now no one else gains extra info about if Iran will be attacked or not, and anything more hyper-specific would just be illegal to bet on for normal law reasons.

	▲	hedora 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't read the link, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of assassination markets. `I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 13 with nightshade. I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 13 with hemlock. ... I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 15 by being stabbed to death in the back. ... I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 17 with nightshade. I bet $1B that Julius Caesar will not be killed on March 17 with hemlock. ... 1,000,000 automatically generated bets omitted.` Since there can only be one assassination of Julius Caesar, the person ordering the hit only has to pay $1B, and only if the assassination succeeds. Sure, people can bet some cash and attempt to get a cut of the assassin's money. Traditionally, you put that cash back into the pot, so (for all but the successful event) it goes to the assassin's pockets. The first-order issue is that the assassin needs to bet a bunch of cash to out-bet the zero-information speculators. Some Roman trillionaire could bet $100K that the assassination would happen for each slot, drowning out the cash of the actual assassin. Of course, this would cost them $100B if placing bets are free, and there are a million scenarios. The next big problem arises if people can watch for movements on a given position in real time. The market can fix that by running the feed on, say, a 1 hour delay. So, while they're sharpening their knives at the Senate, the Roman congress-critters can each put in a bet via cell phone. Of course, then the (totally ethical, I'm sure) people running the assassination market could siphon money off by spying on the realtime feed. This tertiary problem is solved by making sure those people are generally well-known, giving them an incentive to not piss off assassins.

▲ hedora 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The person that wants them to be punched in the face takes the bet, of course!

This was the primary use case for polymarkets before they were banned, and the reason they were banned.

(Well, secondary use case, and secondary reason for the ban. The first was stealing retail investors' retirement funds, and a series of financial panics that led to the Great Depression and creation of the SEC.)

▲ QuadmasterXLII 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If some addled gambling addict is dumb enough to take the bet, it’s their dollars and your mouth.

	▲	bdangubic 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		exactly

▲ bdangubic 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For example, In my comment replace “I” with “Trump” and replace punch with “started another war”

We can go on and on (I can give you 7 million other examples too, this is easy one), the entire prediction market is meant for idiots to give their money to non-idiots that are rigging the whole thing (without any regulation).

	▲	collingreen 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's roughly correct though? Like the alleged point is exactly that - provide an incentive to establish true information earlier than otherwise. If you view prediction markets like that it's only weird to see people taking the other side with no information (I was going to say "like bar bets" but that's the same kind of thing! Don't bet on things you know nothing about if you hate losing money!)