I agree with Thompson about these kinds of prediction markets, but predicting horrible catastrophes is one of the prosocial early use cases of these things.

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__MatrixMan__ 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Agreed, as long as it's a catastrophe that the bettors can't cause, but for which advance warning can mitigate harms.

For instance, I'm in favor of bets that a certain astroid will strike the earth at a certain time and place. A signal from the prediction markets might cause somebody to evacuate in a scenario where they'd otherwise cry "fake news."

Let's not bet on whether the water will remain drinkable, because the last thing we need is for somebody to have an incentive to poison it.

	▲	jacobgkau 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> For instance, I'm in favor of bets that a certain astroid will strike the earth at a certain time and place. A signal from the prediction markets might cause somebody to evacuate in a scenario where they'd otherwise cry "fake news." I understand the point you're making, but in this case, you're still incentivizing someone somewhere to not attempt to the best of their ability to intervene in that astroid. Bets that truly can't cause any change in behavior that might affect the outcome are a mostly theoretical category, in my opinion.

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3-cheese-sundae 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the prediction markets, there's a fine line between predicting and manifesting.

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tptacek 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean, I'm talking about things like hurricanes and earthquakes and forest fires, not running death pools.

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3-cheese-sundae 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think I see where you're coming from, but if we're using them to predict hurricanes, it's likely just meteorological data arbitrage. All else seems like random chance; hardly an example of an oracle.

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echelon 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> forest fires

Fire bug

> earthquakes

Dynamite the fault

> hurricanes

Crazy, but, hear me out: mirrors in space warming the Atlantic, mirrors in Africa warming the atmosphere ("solar power"), Trump wanting to nuke a hurricane, etc.

Pandemic? Go harvest bats and put them in a cage with chickens. You don't even need a molecular bio lab.

Stock market crash? Bombs. Terrorist attacks.

Energy prices? Derail a train carrying fuel cars. Bonus points if it's in a major metro and has a blast radius. Or, I dunno, start a war with Iran.

This could get really bad.

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AnimalMuppet 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Dynamite the fault? I presume you haven't seriously thought about how much dynamite it would take and how deeply you'd have to plant it.

Mirrors in space? Again, have you done the math? How many thousands of acres of mirrors would you need, how many rockets would it take, and how much would they cost? Could you make enough on the betting market to break even?

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tptacek 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Dynamite the fault"? What are you, a Bond villain?

	▲	echelon 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The Bond villain would be the person running the betting market.