Summary: attempts to resolve No if we are surprised by a major event (before 2025-11-01 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 50 (ranked, not stonks), 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.
Previously: /EvanDaniel/will-nothing-unanticipated-happen-b
Update 2025-09-12 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Unanticipated
Pre-existing markets that resolve due to the event, even if only indirectly related (e.g., "Will [person] do X this year?" resolving because they died), count as Anticipated.
In multiple-choice markets, if an answer becomes impossible due to the event and effectively drops to 0% (even if the market cannot resolve yet), that also counts as Anticipated—treated similarly to "unambiguously incrementing a counter."
There is a limit to how loosely related the pre-existing market can be; the above examples meet the bar. Broad effects like "the stock price moved" are not specific enough.
Update 2025-10-31 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Resolution timing: The market will be given additional time beyond the close date to allow for evaluation of whether Something Happened, but likely not the full 30 days unless specific markets are identified as watch items. The creator will resolve early unless traders present evidence for NO resolution.
Update 2025-11-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Benchmark for "Something": The threshold is approximately 200 traders (50% of the 50th most-popular ranked market's trader count).
Venezuelan boat strikes example: The creator considers this the best candidate event so far, but it likely did not reach the required number of traders within its first 30 days, which may mean the event happened too slowly to count under the current rules.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Trader | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ2,162 | |
| 2 | Ṁ325 | |
| 3 | Ṁ261 | |
| 4 | Ṁ148 | |
| 5 | Ṁ106 |
People are also trading
@EvanDaniel would this market have cause a No resolution here or is the inciting event ("Twitter claim") not notable enough?
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-marcus-hutter-win-his-10000-be
Unanticipated - I don't believe "person makes a claim on Twitter" resolved any markets, but I did not check
Something - it has 420 traders, well above the threshold
Happened - ....idk why but 420 traders is a LOT of interest in a >90% market
Might at least be worth using as a model edge case in any future iteration of this market.
@EvanDaniel if there are 100 cases of someone claiming something, that generate 500 traders each and trade at 2%, will the one that ends up resolving Yes be more worthy than the 99 that resolve No?
I just realized I never asked - could I get some clarification on "factor of two of the top 50"? I'm interpreting it as "at least half of the # of total traders as the 50th-most-popular ranked market," but I'm not sure which one we're using.
As far as I'm aware, there's a few events that could qualify for this. The biggest one I can think of are the Venezuelan boat strikes.
@Marnix they don't seem to have gotten enough traders fast enough.
You're right, it's 50% of the 50th most traders market.
@Eliza is correct on both counts. I haven't checked yet what the benchmark market is or what number that produces. I'm assuming it's still 200-ish.
This seems like the best candidate I have so far, but I don't think it got that many traders in its first 30 days. /AlexanderTheGreater/military-conflict-between-the-us-an Which means that maybe the thing that happened happened so slowly that my rules don't count it as a thing. In a completely unforeseeable turn of events, my unanticipated events market has run into unanticipated market edge cases. Suggestions for improvement on the next iteration are quite welcome.
OK so I'm assuming this resolves YES by default. NO holders, if that's wrong, post your evidence!
But I'm also realizing the close time is kinda wrong:
total traders within a factor of two of the top 50 (ranked, not stonks), within 30 days of creation.
If Something Happened yesterday, it might take time to figure out whether it was, in fact, Something.
I'll definitely give it a little bit for folks to make their case for NO if they want. Should I give it the full 30 days? I'm inclined to say no, resolve early, unless someone has particular markets they'd like to suggest for watch items.
@traders what say you?
@felixx No, I was just thinking about how this market could have been better written. If no one has anything I should pay attention to or reasons to resolve No by now, we might as well resolve Yes.
@Balasar I agree, that seems likely to have been unanticipated! (Though I have not checked.)
But is it Something?
@BryonMoss Honestly understandable. I'd start by reading through the "previously" market, it has good clarifications.
@evan does Charlie Kirk's death resolve this no? A few markets appear to have resolved, but they are of the flavor "will Kirk do X before year", and did not seem to be anticipating his death in any way
@robert I haven't looked in detail at all the options, but I believe this means it stays open:
/AlS/will-another-ceo-be-assassinated-in
@robert I think KIrk's shooting counts as Something, though, on the basis of this market. (I haven't checked exact threshold though, I might be off):
/vdb/whats-true-about-charlie-kirks-shoo
@EvanDaniel Maybe I am misunderstanding the exercise here, but my belief through the entire duration of this market series was that the Unanticipated part was taken literally -- several markets resolved when Charlie Kirk died, such as:
/reactor/will-charlie-kirk-and-nick-fuentes
/strutheo/will-charlie-kirk-run-for-governor
Any time someone is betting on markets like these, they have to take 'early demise' into account -- I certainly at least attempt to think about it each time.
So, for the sake of clarification:
If some other random person passes away for whatever reason, and a market like the two above resolves, is that enough to make it Anticipated?
What if the person who passes away was listed as an answer in a multiple choice question that then moved to 0% even though the market can't actually resolve yet?
@Eliza There's... some limit on how vaguely related it can be. But yeah, "will Charlie Kirk do xyz" is good enough to count. The first one I noticed resolve was the CEO one, so that's what I based my decision on.
If some other random person passes away for whatever reason, and a market like the two above resolves, is that enough to make it Anticipated?
Yeah, that counts.
What if the person who passes away was listed as an answer in a multiple choice question that then moved to 0% even though the market can't actually resolve yet?
Seems close enough to the "unambiguously increments a counter" example. And you could claim your "I told you so" points. I think that's good enough, but if someone wants to make the counterargument I'm listening.
In general I think we should be looking for something at least slightly more specific than "the stock price moved"; both your examples seem like they meet that standard.
If you want to make a lot of mana:
Spend your entire life savings on Yes shares in this market
Take out some loans and start creating markets about everything you can think of to defend your Yes position
Wait 3 months
Currently, top 50 ranked not-stonks appears to get as low as 476 traders; a qualifying market for this to resolve would therefore need to hit 238 (though this number will change).