Is @IsaacKing an honorable member of the Manifold community? -- see comments!

Plus

Ṁ28k

resolved Apr 15

Resolved

ALL

This question resolves to NO if five active users post comments saying @IsaacKing acted dishonorably on Manifold after market creation. The comments must say what @IsaacKing did that they consider dishonorable, and they must refer to things @IsaacKing did after I created this market. If this does not happen by market close, this question will resolve to YES.

An "active user" is a user whose portfolio value exceeds M$2000, or who has made at least 20 markets. (If these statistics become not-easily-accessible I may change to something easier to verify.)

If @IsaacKing posts in the next month (let's say, before the end of November California time) to ask me to take this down, I will resolve to N/A.

Why this market? @IsaacKing made a market suggesting that "credit markets" or "trust markets" could be a useful idea.

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-anyone-ask-me-to-make-a-market

Meanwhile, there's some drama around the unenforceability of loan repayments

https://manifold.markets/Yev/i-want-to-invest-m1000-for-1-week-h

where... maybe some sort of trust system could help?

I'm not going to apply personal judgement; if five active users say @IsaacKing did something dishonorable, I'm not going to verify or question. I think it's important to be transparently impartial here.

On the other hand, since I'm soliciting negative comments, please be civil about it. I really don't want to turn this into "everybody bash on this one user".

Apr 14, 7:06pm: ~~Is @IsaacKing an honorable member of the Manifold community?~~ → Is @IsaacKing an honorable member of the Manifold community? -- see comments!

This question is managed and resolved by Manifold.

#Manifold

#Trust

Get

1,000

and

3.00

26 Comments

57 Holders

309 Trades

Sort by:

Isaac is also dishonorable for blocking multiple people from commenting on his markets for no good reason after what I'd consider relevant useful comments. For example, I got blocked from commenting in Isaac's markets right after this comment just showing the voting consensus:
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-the-whales-win-this-market#8ByEP3AY7mhO7XW5hOx5

predicted NO

I'll take this opportunity to plug a related market of mine:

And thank you to Boklam for running this interesting experiment. I'm glad they did so.

predicted YES

Imo this market is defamatory because the resolution criteria don't amount to the title and most viewers will only see the title and resolution

predicted NO

@ElmerFudd Do note that I consented.

(Though I wouldn't object to the title being a little more descriptive.)

predicted YES

Well, looks like I have to resolve NO. I promised I'd resolve strictly according to the rules, and here we have our five accusations.

Marcus:

https://manifold.markets/Boklam/is-isaacking-an-honorable-member-of#LqKnkanCGbCBAtjzkZRc

Yev:

https://manifold.markets/Boklam/is-isaacking-an-honorable-member-of#DEPBkh6ETcRiM9Zv7UYz

Nico:

https://manifold.markets/Boklam/is-isaacking-an-honorable-member-of#GlFbo1EeQVpaTd7OG4Im

Luke:

https://manifold.markets/Boklam/is-isaacking-an-honorable-member-of#vxZ2LOPUdqB9ZwO3KY67

Pat:

https://manifold.markets/Boklam/is-isaacking-an-honorable-member-of#j8J8PFKb66TGRocxo7yg

predicted YES

@Boklam I'm not happy about the results. I have my personal bias here: I rather like Isaac, and when he ruffles people's feathers I tend to agree with him.

Also, there's an argument to be made that 2 or 3 of the 5 accusations shouldn't count:

Luke's accusation was clearly not serious, and made explicitly to manipulate this market.

Yev's accusation was retracted after a short discussion with Isaac.

Nico's an accusation was sincere and in good faith, but he changed his mind later after he talked to Isaac some more.

The other two (Marcus and Pat) were true accusations.

Also, a couple of other users (Courtney and Adam) had some pretty negative stuff to say about Isaac, even though it didn't meet the criteria I laid out.

Anyway, this market resolved NO because I promised to interpret it robotically. Certainly Isaac annoys some users...

predicted NO

@Boklam yeah, the robotic explanation is no, but he's not that bad I think in community members eyes about dishonourableness

predicted YES

@Boklam Im not happy about the resolution either and frankly you should have told me my retraction wouldn’t count before resolving it. It wasn’t at all clear according to the description that you would rely on comments count rather than user count. Since I provided an important update I think I shouldn’t count as a user who votes NO. That’s a sketchy resolution to me and I honestly think Marcus and Pat haven’t been particularly honorable in the way they’ve swayed the market.

predicted YES

@NicoDelon The resolution is correct per the letter of the criterion.

I love the irony in your accusation about Marcus. But 1. IIRC he's castigated Isaac in other comments before this market existed, and 2. Everyone who bet here after reading the criterion priced in that it'd take just a few no voters to sway the market.

predicted YES

@ElmerFudd The letter was unclear is what I’m saying.

What’s the irony?

predicted NO

I think Boklam's resolution here was correct FWIW. They stated up front that they weren't going to inject their personal opinions into the market, and it was effectively just a court of public opinion. I think it was an interesting experiment, and provides a good example of how ruling by public statements can go wrong.

I think the title probably could be a little more clear, like "do at least 5 members of the community believe Isaac is dishonorable", but other than that I have no objections to Boklam's handling of this market.

predicted NO

To no one's surprise, I'll consider Isaac dishonorable. I'm not too interested in debating it again here but here are some examples.

1. Double standards regarding market manipulation. Isaac very clearly does a lot of market manipulation. However, when others do it, he considers it not fair game, bad etiquette, violating norms etc.
2. If you do something he wouldn't do, play a different strategy or just disagree with him, he calls you dumb and is just often unnecessarily mean.
3. He uses vagueness in the markets he creates to his advantage, changing resolution criteria (always to his benefit, especially when he has a large position) and denies this and is awful to anyone who calls them out on it.

predicted NO

@MarcusAbramovitch If Isaac didn't bet in his own markets would you have any concerns about his honor?

predicted NO

@MartinRandall I have issues with other things he does

predicted YES

@MarcusAbramovitch Why do I get the sense that there’s collusion behind the scenes to resolve this market NO?

predicted YES

@MarcusAbramovitch what's an example of (1) or (2)?

predicted NO

@Boklam Can we get a confirmation of the current count? I believe we're at 4: Nico, Yev, Luke, and Pat have all claimed that I acted dishonorably.

(Nico's was later sort-of retracted, and Yev's and Luke's were both not serious, but if I'm understanding Boklam's criteria correctly those all still count.)

Adam's doesn't count because they refused to provide a reason. Anton, Courtney, Mirek, and Eugger only implied as much without using the word "dishonorable", so they also don't count.

Also Boklam I'd recommend you add the criteria you mentioned in this comment to the market description, so they're easier to find.

predicted YES

@IsaacKing I hereby confirm that I retract my earlier NO vote (if that’s allowed).

predicted NO

I think he's dishonorable because he creates tons of markets, bets in his own markets, and then behaves differently in subtly plausibly deniable ways that benefit his side

When he's not winning a market, he'll put more effort into crafting criteria after market creation like banning "trivially win[ning] by having one person automate":
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-the-whales-win-this-market
whereas in his other markets he didn't care at all that I trivially won by automation when it wasn't against his side:
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-i-reach-14000-unique-traders-o
In other markets he'll put literally no thought/effort at all in and forces those who bet against him to look into it and provide evidence or he'll just resolve in his favor without checking:
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-anyone-take-out-a-manifold-ad

If you bet against Isaac, your side requires proof you're correct. If you bet with Isaac, he planned on resolving it his way without looking at any ads at all

predicted NO

and I think it's dishonorable to act immune to conflict of interest when these points are brought up

@Boklam that's five

predicted NO

@PatMyron Different markets can have different resolution criteria. I can design one market to try to discourage automation, and another market to allow it. That's not "dishonorable", that's "asking two different questions".

I suspect that this is the sort of accusation that you'd have reversed in the counterfactual world where I do differently, and therefore is impossible to actually satisfy. If I try to ban automation in my market, you accuse me of inconsistency. If I don't try to ban automation, you accuse me of encouraging automation. There's no course of action I could have taken that would actually satisfy you; you just set out with the intention to complain and pick whatever justification seems most convenient.

This is backed up by the fact that you make no effort to provide real evidence in favor of your claims, and just cherry-picked 3 out of my 1500+ markets that supposedly demonstrate this bias. Anyone with a basic understanding of statistics knows that outliers exist, and with me having created so many markets, of course there will be at least one where I forgot about an easy way to verify the result. You completely ignore the hundreds of hours that I've spent researching the correct resolution and discussing it with traders to ensure I haven't missed anything.

It would be trivially easy to find those markets if you cared to actually look. Similarly, you could also find all the markets where I ensured that my poorly-written resolution criteria didn't harm others, by compensating them out of my own balance or N/Aing the market despite me having a profitable position. That's my standard operating procedure on all my markets, and you have yet to provide an example of where someone has actually been harmed by my errors.

Allow me to register a prediction: If I win the WvM market, you're going to accuse me of some sort of malfeasance where I interpreted the resolution criteria in a biased way, or maybe you're unable to find anything that looked biased and you instead claim that the market itself is somehow unethical like you did with the unique traders market. If I N/A the market due to the ambiguities in my description, you'll accuse me of having done so to prevent myself from incurring huge losses. If I lose the market, maybe losing M$500,000 will be enough to satisfy you, but I think there's also a good chance you accuse me of having attempted to exploit ambiguous criteria and only backed down once heroic people like you called me out on it. I doubt there's any reasonable course of action I can take that would not incur complaints from you, so I don't think the fact that you're complaining conveys any relevant information.

(To provide some additional context for people reading this, Pat has been harping on that unique traders market of mine for a while, somehow managing to claim that encouraging automation of trades is unethical despite the fact that Pat themselves was the one who chose to engaged in such automation. They also conveniently ignore the fact that hundreds of other people's markets encourage the exact same behavior as mine did, and Pat has never once (as far as I'm aware) spoken out against any of them.)

predicted NO

I can design one market to try to discourage automation, and another market to allow it. That's not "dishonorable", that's "asking two different questions".

Neither specified that when asked. They were both decided after asking

> cherry-picked 3 out of my 1500+
> of course there will be at least one where I forgot about an easy way to verify the result

To be clear, I feel this way about tons of your markets but wanted to be mindful of others' time. Here are some more of your markets I feel similarly about being somewhat subjective:

predicted NO

@PatMyron ...Huh? It looks like you just picked out completely random markets of mine. Several of those have pretty objective resolution criteria, and many others I haven't even bet in.

Please explain how a market can be evidence of me biasing resolution criteria in my favor if I haven't placed any bets in the market.

predicted NO

@IsaacKing I didn't check how many of the linked markets you bet on, nor did I ever claim you bet on all of them. Many of those linked markets boil down to "will Isaac think X" which is the definition of subjective

predicted NO

@IsaacKing but this is another example similar to the manifold ad example where I just bet no alongside you because I figured you wouldn't even search Twitter and would offload providing evidence onto the yes side who probably wouldn't respond:

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-aella-post-a-poll-on-twitter-a

Related questions

Related questions