Will prediction markets on individual deaths continue to be allowed on Manifold?
Some people find them bad or distasteful, and it seems like the sort of thing that might plausibly violate other website rules.
There's been some controversy about such markets following the FTX debacle.
Related questions
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@ussgordoncaptain shrug it's subjective; intentionally imprecise; a trend rather than a rule.
I'd rather have accurate information on Scott Alexander's lifespan than Beyonce's lifespan, and I'd argue the market on the former would be more good for society than the market on the latter.
@IsaacKing If you want to be more controversial, make such markets for various trans individuals.
I think markets about personal details of people who are not public figures are inappropriate unless prior consent has been obtained. (Regardless of whether it's about suicide in particular or whether they're trans.) I think Manifold's community guidelines concur:
Markets and comments that are made with malicious intent to harass an individual or specific group of people [are not allowed.]
When it comes to those who are public figures, most personal details seem to be fine to ask about, but suicide might be an exception due to its extremely sensitive nature. I think Manifolders are still in disagreement about that. I've already pushed the boundaries a little with this one, I don't see a need to make any more.
Any rule or community norm that treats harassment of trans people differently from harassment of non trans people is obviously terrible, and I'd expect almost everyone on Manifold to agree.
I think this sort of thing is a valid counterargument against the claim that markets on death specifically create bad incentives. (A more direct example that I gave earlier: "Will player X still be playing in 3 years?" sounds like a perfectly innocent question, and one that many fans would certainly be interested in, but it has the same potential bad incentives as "Will player X die in the next 3 years?")
However, there is still a big difference in terms of optics, which I do believe are important - just not important enough to justify prohibiting the markets.
[This is a reply to this comment (https://manifold.markets/kolotom99/2022-fifa-world-cup-will-irans-nati#egyD1a9PbkwqnM0IABa6) by Jack on another market. Jack asked for the discussion to be moved here. Additions are in square brackets]
Good morning Jack, as promised, here is my response. I'm sorry for the size of my reply, but this topic is important to me.
First, a question. In this comment (https://manifold.markets/BenjaminIkuta/will-prediction-markets-on-individu#Yk3BcyHZK9Wx2RL5gpjb) you argue that prediction markets on life and death are valuable. I would like to know the value to see, whether this value might outweigh the value of not having them. And I will try to show that value in the last part.
The Tomek market
[Context: I was a bit unhinged and wrote this reply to Tomek, who I felt was ignoring me. Not my finest moment: https://manifold.markets/kolotom99/2022-fifa-world-cup-will-irans-nati#70w49yqWkEfsIcBgBrbJ ]
I would argue a market on a public person is worse, because Tomek has anonymity, insofar as most people do not know his real identity. But you seem to have the same intuition, this market would probably be taken down.
I don’t have a strong stance on the public person/ private person argument, but I don’t really understand at which point it is your choice to enter the public light. The public decides that.
Laws
Laws are not the same internationally, and I don’t know how well people in Iran for example are protected by these.
Fraud markets and other illegal/immoral things
You argue that fraud markets have the same problem as a market on life and death. I disagree, whether the public can influence the outcome is an important point to me. Like with my example with the formulation of Tomek’s question (https://manifold.markets/kolotom99/2022-fifa-world-cup-will-irans-nati#EIIgOSzBuziduaMHMrWw), I think with fraud it is close to impossible for the public to influence this outcome. You would have to convince a court that someone is guilty and that is, at least in most countries, very difficult.
Insurances
The difference with life insurances is that the insurer votes YES and has an interest in the well being of the insured person. The only one voting NO is the insured person. And yes, there might be an incentive to kill themselves or for their families to kill them. But the risk of not getting the money because of insurance fraud is a good enough deterrent for me. They could hire a hitman, yes. This is the reason for asking for the value you see in having life or death markets. I think in this case the value of having insurances outweighs the potential risk.
Monopoly money
This was not your argument, but it is an important one to me. This user (https://manifold.markets/BenjaminIkuta/will-prediction-markets-on-individu#xegvefC8TEq4rHRXpAea) argues that assassination markets are not a serious concern for a site that doesn't accept crypto and can only pay out to charity. I don’t want to get into a debate over crypto, so I will not argue that Mana and a crypto currency are pretty similar.
But Mana seems to have value to people. To some people it has enough value to pay for it on this site. I don’t think that it exists at this point, but I can imagine an easy way to pay out Mana for real money. The price of Mana is 1 USD for 100 Mana at the moment.
Here is the scenario: A person with a lot of Mana invites a friend to the site. This friend complains that he does not have a lot of Mana, so the person decides to tip them on posts. His friend is super thankful and gives him some real money. Mana exchanged for real money.
Assassination markets
Since there is a way to cash out, I would argue a life or death market on here is very close to an assassination market.
To me that is a very good argument not to have them on this site. If you don’t agree, my optics take might convince you.
Optics
Optics, the stupidest argument in the world. "It feels bad." is an argument so bad I want to do the opposite of what they want.
But here is the kicker. I like this site. I want this site to grow. And for that this site can not have the reputation of having assassination markets on it. I might not be able to convince you, Jack, but I think my arguments are pretty convincing to a lot of people.
I think it would be Manifold Market’s best move not to allow life or death markets.
@enemel I think there's clear value in predicting whether some people will die, be hurt, etc. E.g. "Will Biden die before 2025?" or "Will Biden be seriously injured before 2025?" or "Will there be an assassination attempt on Biden before 2025?" - clearly important. Just using Biden as one specific example. And similarly, "How long will I live?" is valuable to me - I make my own predictions on this question, though I don't ask Manifold because I don't believe other people can add much to this prediction.
Public/private figures: I don't have a clear answer on this either, but in my mind it's about tradeoffs around net value - if the subject feels the market has negative value for whatever reason, and there aren't enough others getting positive value, then it's not worth it.
Other types of questions: Yes, I know that fraud is an example that can't really be "manipulated" by external actors. But there are plenty of examples that can. E.g. "Will person X be accused of a crime?" or "Will person X be sued?" can be directly impacted by others - but I think many believe such questions are valuable. Many others questions e.g. "Will I change jobs?" can be influenced by others. In one market "Will person X and Y be dating?" someone reportedly bought NO and then tried to break them up: https://manifold.markets/Elena/a-market-on-manifold-markets-will-b#ZaQ8pjwqIjNOzKLEyzcS - such a case would clearly be bad, but doesn't mean we should ban all questions that could potentially have a similar problem
Insurance: The only NO buyers are the insured and their families/heirs. But this is not a particularly big change from allowing any stranger to buy NO - after all, most homicides are done by people who the victim knew, not by strangers.
Play money: It reduces the incentives substantially, but certainly does not eliminate them, I agree.
Also, adding some context from the earlier discussion: This was in the context of a market about Iranian football players being harmed, and the original argument against:
I think the question "will the players face repercussions from their government" would be an ok question. But I think betting on whether a person will be harmed by anything is a bit too much.
I know it's fake money, but with real money this bet would be an incentive to harm people. And even though I don't think that a person crazy enough to harm someone for mana exists, maybe we should not take the chance.
Which is a valid argument (it's the same incentives argument I discussed in an earlier comment), but a) I think the danger is very small and b) too many other potential routes for bad incentives exist and I don't see a good way to draw a line on what should be allowed or not that would disallow this but allow other types of predictions that we want. E.g. "Will player X still be playing in 3 years?" sounds like a perfectly innocent question, and one that many fans would certainly be interested in, but it has the same potential bad incentives as "Will player X die in the next 3 years?"
I don’t really understand at which point it is your choice to enter the public light. The public decides that.
I'm a bit confused by this statement. Can you give me some examples of people who could not have chosen to avoid the spotlight if they had wanted to do so?
@IsaacKing I might be wrong about this, but the argument that you could leave your career and everything you built behind, just so there are no people betting on your life, is enough to convince me.
@Jack I'll need some time for my reply. Definitely some good points in there, thanks.
@MartinRandall Ah, ok, viral memes are a good example. Outrage mobs on Twitter could be another one.
@BenjaminIkuta I do actually respect and understand that as an answer, although it would probably be interesting if we could poll the community on different question formulations etc to see what feels more or less bad. And I believe that the benefits generally outweight the badness.
FYI here's a link to a market on injury/harm that one commenter argues against: https://manifold.markets/kolotom99/2022-fifa-world-cup-will-irans-nati
@kolotom99 Like I said, it's on injury/harm and the argument against it is the problematic incentives - so it's a generalized argument of the argument against life-or-death markets. If one believe a market on harm is dangerous because of potentially bad incentives, death is just a special case of that arugment.