What will be my favorite question on this AMA?
8
4
Ṁ90resolved May 20
1D
1W
1M
ALL
50%1.4%
From everything I’ve seen, you deeply value transparency (perhaps radically so). Where does that come from?
30%29%
What's the best example of a valuable prediction that Manifold served up that we wouldn't have had otherwise?
20%10%
What ways have people have used Manifold that have been most surprising to you?
0.6%
How did you get first introduced to/involved in Effective Altruism?
7%
How important is real money betting? Can this site succeed without it?
7%
What's your business model going to be?
7%
What's your favorite market someone has posted so far?
10%
What did you expect from your users that they didn’t do/haven’t done?
Ask me questions below, and I'll answer them inline! Anything is fair game.
After market close, I'll pick out my favorite questions and distribute the mana somehow, with at least 50% to the top choice.
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answered
What ways have people have used Manifold that have been most surprising to you?
The most obvious answer is that we never expected Manifold to turn into a social network. In our initial formulation, we spent a bunch of time thinking about e.g. the DPM market maker and the Solana blockchain; see our initial grant proposal: https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/ACX-Grant-4808a0f6243247fa90eaff9608070c3d
We dropped the blockchain and mostly dropped the market maker; but the thing we stumbled upon was the social nature of betting, that nobody else had been paying attention to. Seeing people create markets on their own pregnancies, or live-blogging their dating experiences, and sharing that with their own intimate crowd - those are use cases we never had in mind, and are constantly delighted by!
answered
What ways have people have used Manifold that have been most surprising to you?
@Austin A pleasant surprise indeed! PredictIt definitely validates that people want to talk about this stuff. Hopefully it doesn't present too much of a moderation challenge in the future. Of course, if it does there's always something like https://ethresear.ch/t/prediction-markets-for-content-curation-daos/1312
answered
What did you expect from your users that they didn’t do/haven’t done?
Hm, probably "resolve markets badly for lulz or profit". I had a bunch of proposals around how to manage creator reputation (eg a judicial court system to arbitrate disputes), but actually it feels like it hasn't been much of a problem at all!
Another that I haven't seen enough of goes along the lines of "futarchy in action"; I feel like the entire space of possible prediction markets is still incredibly large, and we've only just begun scratching the surface.
answered
What did you expect from your users that they didn’t do/haven’t done?
@Austin Yeah I've seen a little bit of tom foolery, which has made me a little more discerning about whose markets to bet on, but if someone is worried enough, they can always build an honorability market for insurance?
answered
What's the best example of a valuable prediction that Manifold served up that we wouldn't have had otherwise?
This one is actually pretty hard to answer, so props for asking it! Top of mind for me is https://manifold.markets/Austin/what-database-will-manifold-be-prim - even if we're not likely to end up switching soon, I got so much useful info (and a lot of friends reached out with ideas after seeing the market!)
It's kind of hard because I think the value of Manifold so far has been less in the overt predictions, and more in:
- Forming a community of awesome people with shared interests
- Teaching the world how prediction markets can work through good UX and a playful nature
And always because knowing the counterfactual is hard (what would have happened otherwise
answered
How did you get first introduced to/involved in Effective Altruism?
Haha I wish I had a superhero origin story or something... but the reality is I don't super remember anymore.
One very salient memory was in middle school, when I and a bunch of classmates from my Catholic youth group were raising money to fund our annual trip to Tijuana, Mexico. Every year, we would drive down in a bus, stay for a week, meet the locals, and physically construct a house for the locals.
We settled on a charity car wash ("free", asking for donations after the wash), gathered the materials, spread the word to our friends and family, and spent 6 hours in the sun washing cars for anyone who visited the gas station. At the end of it, I looked around, multiplied the number of teens helping by the hours spent, and figured we'd earned something like 3-5 dollars per hour. And then I thought, "why didn't we just... go work for McDonald's?"
That was my personal "aha" moment for earning to give, anyways. The rest of the EA stuff I probably fell in through some combination of GWWC, the Catholic establishment of tithing, SSC (now ACX), etc. It just seemed so obviously correct haha.
answered
What's your favorite market someone has posted so far?
https://manifold.markets/Sinclair/will-austin-chen-get-a-girlfriend-a
I smile every time I come back to it 😝
answered
From everything I’ve seen, you deeply value transparency (perhaps radically so). Where does that come from?
(repost from Twitter) Haha "radical transparency" is in fact one of my slogans! It comes from the work on my last few startups (Streamlit, One Word, and now Manifold); if you share your work with the community, you open the door for them to build something great... together!
We've gotten so much in the way of user feedback, publicity, and inbound employee interest as a result of making our thought process and plans transparent to the world; I can't imagine operating in any other way now.
And sharing your work isn't just "hey here's my product, it's ready to buy", but rather the fledgling, messy, warts-and-all process behind the scenes. (another slogan: "if you're not embarrassed by your v0, you took too long to ship")
answered
How important is real money betting? Can this site succeed without it?
I think it's important that the bets be denominated in something that is scarce and is valued by our users. To that end, everything we do has to encourage our users to agree that is the case (aka not wantonly printing mana, being transparent with our expenditures)
Now, is something like "personal withdrawal to USD or USDC" important? I don't know. In my ideal world we would instantly support it because there wouldn't be the regulatory barriers in place, but I think if we get people agreeing that things like "donations to charity" are real-money enough, then we don't need to support that.
I'm especially optimistic about Manifund allowing public goods creators (e.g. you, Lars!) to withdraw mana as real USD, Patreon-style. See https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Manifund-aka-Charity-Equity-2bc1c7a411b9460b9b7a5707f3667db8
answered
What's your business model going to be?
@LarsDoucet Haha there's a couple easy answers:
- Make money on the interest of deposited money (Charles Schwab makes 57% of its money this way https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-money/)
- Take fees on mana transactions or withdrawals
And then the broader, true answer: if our system is responsible for a ton of economic value, it basically doesn't matter, the "business model" will be trivial to figure out. Think of Ethereum in this respect, does Ethereum have a "business model"?
I'm fundamentally not worried about "finding a biz model" because I think the opportunities will be so obvious, especially when we solve public goods funding with Manifund (since Manifold itself is a public good)
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