Will I be robbed during my 3-week trip through Brazil and Ecuador
24
2
530
resolved Oct 30
Resolved
NO

My partner and I will be traveling through Brazil and Ecuador over the course of ~3 weeks (10/7-10/30). We will be passing through Manaus, Sao Paulo, Santos, Igauacu, Quito, and Cuenca. We are both clearly foreigners, will be wearing expensive-looking backpacks, and will likely be traveling through the streets in the late evenings (though we will try to avoid areas that seem dangerous).

I have been previously robbed at gunpoint in Brazil when walking around the streets of Belem in the evening.

The market resolves "Yes" if I am persuaded by force to give any of my possessions to someone else outside of the United States during the next month.

Get Ṁ200 play money

🏅 Top traders

#NameTotal profit
1Ṁ138
2Ṁ32
3Ṁ21
4Ṁ18
5Ṁ18
Sort by:
predicted NO

3 days in and have not been robbed yet!

predicted NO

@CarsonGale Ive stopped betting on this market going forward BTW (now that the trip has started)

predicted NO

@CarsonGale 5 days left in Brazil and 7 days in Ecuador and still haven't been robbed.

predicted NO

Left Brazil sans robbery!

predicted NO

I was initially thinking my chances were ~5%. Maybe I should be more worried?

Prediction markets are less accurate near the extremes of the scale. Even markets that are 100% guaranteed to resolve to NO will tend to stabilize anywhere from 0.5% to 5%, depending on when they're closing and what the volume is. (Manifold is working on ways to mitigate this, but so far they've been unsuccessful.)

There's also resolution risk. You're not a well-known user on Manifold, so people have to factor in that you might resolve this market dishonestly. Even if you came back from your vacation and posted a comment saying "ok, I didn't get mugged", it would still be irrational to bet this market down to 0%, since the chance that you resolve it wrong is higher than that.

Resolution risk is especially relevant on a market like this one where the true result is unverifiable; if you resolve the market incorrectly, people will likely never even find out that that happened.

(And even users with a long history of accurate resolutions have misclicked before, so it's not just the fact that you're a relative unknown.)

I think you can be confident that your "true" risk of getting mugged is less than 12%, but I would not be confident that it's higher than 5%.

(Where I'm defining "true risk" as something like "the probability calculated by a perfectly rational Bayesian reasoner given only the information you currently have access to.)

predicted NO

@IsaacKing Thanks for the comment - that generally makes sense.

With the resolution risk, you would think that should be in favor of betting "No", since if I were to be dishonest I would do it in my own favor! (I have a large "No" position in this market).

Interesting implication that I have insider knowledge and therefore a market advantage just by knowing my propensity not to misclick / lie / forget about the market.

Current profit to be made in this market by traveling to Brazil and robbing @CarsonGale is $6.98 USD. Probably less than you'll get from their wallet, but not nothing!

bought Ṁ94 of NO

Have added subsidies of M$350 of liquidity to try to attract predictions