Summary: attempts to resolve No if we are surprised by a major event (before 2024-02-01 UTC) AND no market resolves in response, Yes otherwise.
Clearly, sometimes Something Happens. But nonetheless, we expect that things Don't Happen with some regularity.
But there are problems with reports that say that something hasn't happened. In addition to the known knowns and the known unknowns, there are also unknown unknowns. How will we establish that Something Happened if we didn't anticipate it in advance?
Well, sometimes there is great interest after the Thing that Happened. Perhaps we can use that to gauge the answer, if only in retrospect?
This market will attempt to gauge the Rumsfeldian risks, the Knightian uncertainty, that Something might Happen that we had not foreseen. Now obviously this is a far harder challenge than merely determining whether Something Happened that we had anticipated. So, some rules:
Unanticipated: If it causes a market to resolve, and that market existed before the event, clearly someone had Anticipated it - at least in vague terms. If you'd known it was coming, you could have placed your bet, and now you could say I Told You So. The same is true for events that unambiguously increment a counter towards a total count of similar events for which a market exists. But sometimes we can guess the shape of the thing without guessing the details.
Something: Clearly it must be a thing people care about; but how to measure that? When the Thing is Anticipated, there's a popular market. But sometimes the interest follows the event. We'll count it as Something if there is a market that is clearly created in response to the Thing, that has total traders within a factor of two of the top 20, within 30 days of creation. Markets after the fact are less interesting, after all, so a somewhat lower bar is appropriate.
Happened: As per the linked markets. It'll be a judgment call. I won't trade in this market. Hopefully this one will be mostly-obvious; why create an ex post facto market about the status quo, and why would it trade heavily?
In keeping with the inspiration markets, this will resolve Yes in the boring case, and No in the exciting case.
1,000
3.00@GraceKind Sure, I think it's unambiguously yes. January was very slow besides the primaries, which were anticipated. Evan can re-resolve if his judgement differs from mine, of course.
It is february
@Eliza I think you'd need a market about the duplication that hit the required threshold, but I'll give it a more careful read later.
@EvanDaniel Or, I could create my own politics market in direct response to their doing so, and hope it hits the trader threshold?
> Something if there is a market that is clearly created in response to the Thing,
I think if it is true, then the Q* story Happened. But so far that market is about a factor of 2 short of the required user count to be Something, and depending on how things shake out with what we think about Ilya it might well have been Anticipated. Even so this feels like the closest thing yet since market creation.
@TiredCliche It was Anticipated:
/firstuserhere/will-sam-altman-continue-to-be-the
As was a potential return:
/milanw/will-sam-altman-be-the-ceo-of-opena
@EvanDaniel (If somehow he returns, but not until the new year, that might not have been Anticipated; I'd have to hunt around and read carefully.)
@Joshua Yeah, I think the existence of both a "will he [not] leave" and a "will he be [regardless of leaving]" market counts as Anticipating both him leaving and returning, even if the return might not have been an edge case that the authors explicitly thought about. Falls in the category of "holy shit, we had a market about that?!".
I think a potential return post-New Year is not Anticipated by any market that existed before he left, but I assume it will be Anticipated well before that actually happens (by some market not linked in my comment above).
@Joshua Is there a reason to believe there was actually a threat to Biden's family and not just an anticipatable car theft gone wrong? Seems like they were just breaking into an empty, unmarked vehicle. It doesn't make sense to break the window if they were trying to hide a bug or a bomb, and I'd expect them to be prepared for a fight if they thought the car was occupied.
@Joshua Make a market in response to the event and see if you can get a thousand traders, then it would resolve No!
an anticipatable car theft gone wrong
Note that while car theft / carjacking is clearly anticipatable, the definition of "anticipated" for this market does require that there be a Manifold market about the thing in question. So I would expect this to count as "unanticipated", but I haven't actually looked for relevant markets; maybe there is one that resolved (or will resolve) in response.
I'd say it definitely counts as "happening" as opposed to "not happening".
But given that this seems like mostly a non-event (in retrospect), I suspect it won't count as "something" (a market created in response would have to get more than ~ 500 traders).
For reference, the most recent Unantipated Somethings that Happened that I'm aware of McCarthy getting ousted as Speaker and the Al-Ahli hospital explosion. LK-99 and the new Speaker being instated, for comparison, were Anticipated.
@Eliza Note that it only has to be within a factor of two of the top 20, so it only needs ~500 traders, not ~1000.
I can think of no better way to support this market than to post info about things that did happen in the real world that probably did not cause a market to resolve, and then hopefully participants betting on No will use that as a springboard to create the subsequent "Something" market that needs to get to 50% of the top 20 within 30 days.
First attempt: I see a story going around on numerous mass media websites about "Industrial robot kills man in Korea" -- the exact details of the story need not correlate with the subsequent market it generates. Even if the story is not necessarily about AI taking over the world and kiling humans, or whatever, I am sure someone can think of several different markets related to that story that could potentially reach 1000 interested traders.
I searched for markets recently resolved with words like "die", "robot", and "killed" and found none that seemed to have resolved directly from this incident.
See if anyone can come up with something catchy! Here we goooooooo!
@Eliza I'm kinda surprised we didn't have any relevant markets about robots killing people! Or robot-related deaths / injuries / accidents in general.
@EvanDaniel Keep searching then! Or else make one and buy some No 😎
I just don't know enough about the subject to make a market.
@Eliza I think McCarthy getting ousted might have resolved this market, but Johnson getting ousted is now clearly anticipated.