[sparky_z]

The result was not, and could never have been, known a priori. All sorts of random things could have gone wrong with the operation causing the raid to fail and Maduro to remain in power. Trump could have just randomly changed his mind, or postponed the raid to beyond the end of January (the cutoff for the betting market). The person placing the bet was still taking a chance, but it was an informed chance that shifted the market probability more in line with reality.

If it helps, you can think of the money made as the payment to a confidential informant for information that contributed to a more complete picture of the world. It just happens via a distributed algorithm, using market forces, rather than at the discretion of some intelligence officer or whoever. The more important the information you have to share, the more it moves the market and the bigger your "fee". It's not being a "grifter" to provide true information that moves the market correctly. In fact, this mechanism filters out the actual grifters - you can't make money (in expectation) by providing false information, like traditional informants sometimes can.

This "intelligence gathering" function is the primary goal of a prediction market. It's the only reason it makes sense to even have them. If you turn it into some parlor game where everybody who participates has access to all the same information, then what are we even doing here?

[lxgr]

> you can't make money (in expectation) by providing false information

You certainly can, but that's usually called market manipulation, not insider trading.

[sparky_z]

Would love to know your proposed mechanism here.

[Dylan16807]

> This "intelligence gathering" function is the primary goal of a prediction market. It's the only reason it makes sense to even have them. If you turn it into some parlor game where everybody who participates has access to all the same information, then what are we even doing here?

If everyone has the same information, then whoever does better analysis wins. That's far from a parlor game.

Ideally people with good info and people with good analysis can both make money. (And ideally nobody takes real-world actions to make their bet come true.)

[scoofy]

> The result was not, and could never have been, known a priori.

This is a level of solipsism not worth discussing.

Yes, Superman could be a real person and we all had our minds altered to think he’s a superhero.

Yes, when someone pulls the trigger of a gun pointed at someone’s head, it could misfire and explode in their hand.

The point is that someone influencing prediction markets can push this probability to very, very near zero. So much so, as to make the outcome effectively certain for all intents and purposes.

[sparky_z]

Which makes their information much more valuable than most people's.

[orwin]

Wasn't a guy at google seeing the top seach result before publication and bet on those? That's also intelligence gathering, so i guess that's okay?

[sparky_z]

I mean, yes, unironically. If the goal of a prediction market is to find out the truth about the world, that's what will get you there faster.

Google might feel differently about whether it's OK in that case, but that's their prerogative.

Ask yourself: If the CIA really needed to know in advance what the top search result was going to be with as much accuracy as possible (for some weird reason, doesn't matter why), how would they go about doing it? Would they spend a bunch of time evaluating all of the public information, or would they just bribe (or otherwise convince) an insider at Google to tell them?