Will anyone help me figure out what to do in WvM?
27
837
550
resolved May 6
Resolved
YES

Getting invested in the WvM market was a mistake. I've now spent upwards of $30,000, and the market isn't slowing down. A huge number of people have decided to do whatever it takes to see me go further into debt, seemingly just out of spite. If I stop betting now I lose 5 million mana, but if I continue there's no end in sight. I don't know what to do. I used to think people on Manifold liked me, but now it seems like 80% of the site hates me and wants to see me suffer, for basically zero benefit to themselves. They're even advocating to have me banned from the site just for exploiting the exact same loophole that they exploited first. I don't understand why they're doing this. I'm feeling very alone and I'd appreciate some advice. Market resolves based on whether anyone gives advice I find helpful.

I'm not in a very good mental space right now, so I will be extremely trigger-happy towards blocking unplesant people in the comments. Remind me later and I'll unblock you.

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predicted NO

Perhaps you want to liquidate your positions on other markets, if you are solid on your commitment to stop any further trades.

Or not.

This is not a recommendation.

Just to provide a close to this story, I've decided to quit Manifold, other than as necessary to maintain my existing markets until they're all resolved. It's been taking up too much of my time lately, and I'd rather focus on more productive things. The recent conduct of the Manifold admins has also made me lose much of my remaining trust in Manifold's ability to be a reliable platform for predictions in the long run, and caused me to no longer want to continue being a part of it. I love the idea of an open prediction market platform where anyone can make a market, and I hope that a future iteration of the idea proves successful. I also love Manifold's core community; It was, frankly, one of the best places on the internet for a time, and I'm glad I got to be a part of it. I appreciate everyone's support offered after WvM, and I apologize for all the drama I caused. I strongly dislike being the focus of people's attention, and it stressed me out to the point where I made some over-dramatic posts like this one, which I regret. I'm not going to be checking Manifold nor the Discord server very frequently going forward, but my profile has contact info for anyone so inclined.

predicted YES

@IsaacKing So long, and thanks for all the fish.

@IsaacKing Thanks for coming back to fill us in on your status! I’d love to hear any feedback you have for us, I’m not sure what conduct you’re referring to.

@ian Falsely implying that I broke some site rule. Falsely claiming that I tried to benefit myself in the WvM market as the market creator. Demoting me without talking to me about the situation first. Taking away my remaining mana with no justification, and implying that I should simply default on the mana I owed people.

@IsaacKing I'll just respond to the points I know about
- 'Falsely implying that I broke some site rule' - you clearly violated the following rule: 'Abusing the unique trader bonus by consistently betting on your own markets with multiple accounts.' with your API keys. This is forgiveable bc you reported the vulnerability, though.

- 'Demoting me without talking to me about the situation first.' - @DavidChee maybe can speak to this

- 'Taking away my remaining mana with no justification, and implying that I should simply default on the mana I owed people.' - you agreed to our bailout which meant you are/were in debt to us 20k+ worth of mana. You moved mana to another account, which we claimed because you owed it to us. This was clearly justified. That said, we're all (except a few team members) of a mind to forgive the debt. I should be able clear that motion with the team later today.

@ian we have a hackathon today ,will talk with the team about it tomorrow

@ian

Abusing the unique trader bonus by consistently betting on your own markets with multiple accounts

Nope. Manifold very clearly stated that paying other people to sign up did not count as an "alt account".

you agreed to our bailout which meant you are/were in debt to us 20k+ worth of mana. You moved mana to another account, which we claimed because you owed it to us. This was clearly justified.

If Manifold wanted to claim more from me, you should have just refunded one fewer transaction. I don't see any good reason to go ahead with the refund, then continue messing with my account afterwards. Why would I want to continue using the site if Manifold is going to be activly obstructing my attempts to do so?

Also, as far as I'm aware, the mana you took from my alt account was not subtracted from what I owe on my main account, it was just stolen entirely. (Not certain about this, I didn't mark down my balance beforehand.)

predicted YES

@IsaacKing I understand that you’re soured on Manifold given the everything. However, I think that you should consider being more polite. They didn’t have to refund you any mana.

@IsaacKing For what it's worth I looked at the balance graph on both accounts around the time it happened and they moved in opposite directions by an equivalent amount.

Another instance of wanting better account statements.

@JohnSmithb9be I agree, that was nice of them, though I'm still not sure it was the correct decision. But I really don't know why they'd expect me to keep using the site if I'm not going to be allowed to accumulate mana and try to pay it back over time.

Wasn't my intention to be rude. What did I say that you thought was rude due to the phrasing, and not the informational content?

@IsaacKing I don't speak for david but I think the zeroing of the alt was just a one time thing to prevent evasion of the losses.

You could take a single alt, post questions on it, and make it back over time with unique trader and referral bonuses. Alternatively, I'm sure there exist some users that would want to pay you mana to ghostwrite their markets. That's just what's possible by yourself. I think your not thinking of this betrays a lack of creativity.

You know what? I'm going to say something that's maybe "bad for manifold" and against the opinion of the rest of the team. Don't take any debt forgiveness.
If you really think the $25,000 refund was a bad decision on our part, then consider it a zero interest loan. The best place to earn mana is in the real economy. Invest it in your own skills with the aim of doing something entrepreneurial. You're young, you're bold, you're smart, your writing is engaging and entertaining, and you're not afraid of risk. Start a business. Hit the gym. Learn marketing. Do whatever and buy whatever you think it takes to 10x, 100x your revenue and total net worth. Eventually, if you have added enough zeroes that $25,000 feels like chump change, then come back to manifold, pay back your debt, and maybe buys some shares for good measure. On the other hand, if you spend all that $25,000 on your skills and your ventures and fail, then consider yourself morally absolved of anything to do with manifold, and go about your life.

Or you could say fuck that. You can actually just quit manifold. You can just make markets and slowly earn bonuses that pale in comparison to your negative balance. You can even just make some deal with the team to forgive your debt, as much as I hate it. Just stop thinking of yourself as a victim. Your actions led you here. Your market, your bets, your strategy, your purchases. You're in a crazy situation because you chose to do crazy things. You can actually just not do crazy things. I would like you to do MORE crazy things that can actually change the world for the better, but you can just not listen to me. It's your life.

@Sinclair this is great! No regret because you are right. Isaac needs to just accept that he is now a meme and get over it. Personally I think the $25k refund was not a good idea because the founders have now created a moral hazard. What will they do next time this happens?

Just read the article that was written about you losing your pants getting too invested in markets. It's a bittersweet feeling to be vindicated that you were indeed too invested in this website. I called it back in the comments of the "will isaac king be happy" market.

I think the owners of the website are morons for refunding you. You were comfortable to flex your weight in the moment to the tune of $29k and now that it didn't go your way you just get most of that back because you fucked up betting more then you can afford and you're a big figure on this website.

I really do wonder if the website owners would have done the same for someone who wasn't known in the community as they list your popularity as one of the reasons for refunding you. If you did this on a real stock market the market owners would not refund you. You would be out the $29k you used to flex. That's the cost of making bets.

I hope you take the $4k lesson to stop investing so heavily in the internet but it should be a $29k lesson.

predicted NO

@memestock This does not seem like a productive location to share this viewpoint.

@JimHays Don't care. The admins can ban me if they want. This idiot is part of the community that ruined this website and I take glee in seeing him fuck his own life up in the effort of trying to flex. Nobody forced him to spend $29k to look tough on a website about fake money. That's all his ego.

@memestock Oh, huh. How did people ruin this website? What could fix that?

@MartinRandall People taking this website too seriously ruins it. People making markets like the WvM market to begin with. The whole point of that market was so the "big fish" could skim off the "small fish". He made that market because he fully expected it to go his way and it most likely would have without outside influence causing him to fail. Also other market makers making "meme markets" that exist solely for the market maker to make more mana.

That is the cancer that ruins this website. It's not about making a fun bet on what you think could happen for these people it's about managing a portfolio of money that they have deluded themselves into believing is real. They take the losses way too seriously so it's not a fun experience anymore.

The "whales" take this website too seriously (as shown by isaac literally spending more then he could afford) and as a result they turn the fun markets into an instrument to instead make "money" so the virtual number goes higher.

@MartinRandall Market fixing like what goes on with the WvM and also in the past with markets like Aellas "will I go on lex friedman" market where she bet YES knowing full well that she had already filed an appearance at the point she made the market that was not know to the public. It's quite literally insider trading and would get you thrown in jail in the real world but because this website is fake nobody gives a fuck about it.

Nobody seems to care about why it's illegal for you to do insider trading in the real life. But because it's not illegal here it's a green light to scam anyone you want.

@memestock The irony being that the WvM market was tagged as "fun".

It's really hard to stop inside trading in the stock market and trying to do that for the fun markets on Manifold just seems impossible.

On the other hand leagues encourage people to care more about profit and I guess you'd see that as a step backwards.

Thanks for sharing.

@MartinRandall Yes that's correct I see leagues as a step in the wrong direction. It's clear that the website owners want to appeal to the people who see this as a gamble. It makes sense because those are the only people who will pay for fake money that has no exit pathway.

In my opinion they are courting the small audience of people willing to pay to use this website as a replacement for real life gambling (who will end up spending some amount of money eventually) by shifting the focus towards a profit competition. The gamblers will get addicted and buy more mana when they go down (just like isaac did).

This is at odds to a normal person who doesn't take this website as seriously as all the "fun" gets turned into a vehicle for the gamblers to profit off the normal users. It's not fun to participate in a market that has a pre determined outcome only known to the market maker. If I don't have fun on the website why would I come back? And after enough time it's just the whales scamming each other and scamming the new people as soon as they join. Only the most degenerate will stay at that point.

Good for short term profit I guess but the website will die without casual users and the hardcore users push the casual users away through their usage patterns.

@memestock Do you think it will help if "trustworthy-ish" creators don't engage in inside trading, so there are a set of "safe" markets for people who just want to have casual fun?

predicted NO

@memestock Maybe move this conversation to Discord? It seems to have moved away from this market.

@MartinRandall Ultimately there needs to be a punishment for people engaging in bad behavior and there isn't. Aella is trusworthy-ish and she's one of the biggest culprits of insider trading. Isaac king gets to flex his weight as a "big fish" and then gets bailed out anyway when he fucks up.

@JimHays
I'm not going to reply any longer to this and I'm not going to join the discord so that any disagreement can be hidden away. I thought this was a good place since Isaac king is one of the people who take this website too seriously and the culture he and his whale friends create is part of my decision to stop engaging with this website beyond arguing in comments. I understand that you really only want a hug box and for anyone with any issues to just quit the website.

@memestock Yeah, there are no clear rules for "trustworthy-ish" today so it doesn't actually give that safety I'm thinking of.

Insider trading can also be fun, like juicy gossip, but sometimes it can feel like a trick. I don't have any answers.

@memestock To me Manifold is like a canvas. There is no “right way” to use it. But what Isaac did was manipulative and uncool and he should have been banned and not given back any money. Now the moral hazard puts the future of Manifold in jeopardy.