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Yeah, I think this should resolve to YES. I have no interest in intentionally creating drama, and with more of my professional acquaintances joining Manifold, I have a decent incentive to avoid even unintentionally controversial markets.

What do people think about my recent markets. Have any seemed intentionally controversial, or unintentionally highly controversial?

@IsaacKing https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-johnleoks-resolve-any-more-mar

The saga was controversial enough that you were warned and John was banned. 10/10 drama, would eat popcorn again.

@IsaacKing

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-jesus-christ-return-by-the-end

10 likes on Jack saying it was a misleading title, plus making jokes about religion.

First one wasn't a controversial market, just a controversial resolution criterion and commenting choice.

Second one doesn't seem controversial at all.

Just wanted to say I like many of your markets. Some of the dialog in the comments would be almost impossible orchestrate anywhere else. If half the prediction markets are offensive then you're stuck on 4chan -- but if none of them are, you're stuck in an IRB. The correct number is >0.

@Jotto999 order arising in the midst of chaos is very fun to watch (in terms of dialogue as you said)

Oh hey, a new one.

Inappropriate or objectionable content, Why is this anti-Semite still a checkmark users on this website? If it Kanye West maybe he be given cool off period, but so far everyday I see this spewed hate speech on my pages! MUST BE REMOVED!

I wonder if the amount of attention paid to a report should be inversely proportional to the number of uppercase words it contains.

okay so as far as I can tell by behavior Isaac probably isn't an anti-semite but I don't know where that comment was posted and there's definitely reason to believe I might have missed something; he's laughing about it in ways that I think are dangerously ambiguous, but a lot of friendly people do that too, it just makes it easier for the amogus to hide, doesn't make isaac an amogus. but, anti-semitism has always been designed to spread through absurdism, so I think we should be on guard about the fact that this isn't just for play, we're goofing off online with real people and if they turn out to be best pals with those who want to kill them, then we have to understand which allegedly friendly person is actually amogus.

mocking the report feels like bad taste but like. idk, "bad taste, but not pro-fash level bad taste" seems like isaac's thing. I feel like from what I know right now, I'd guess isaac is just laughing at the idea that authoritarianisms could be disallowed to discuss on a prediction market site, which, like, yeah, I agree with art spiegelman on that one, we gotta be able to talk about it, we gotta actually have solidarity with the victim rather than cringing at the threat and shouting down the threatener until they're quiet. So in the spirit of that if anyone can think of a safe query to ask on this here prediction market site to predict whether a person ends up participating in contributing to fascism, or the-white-supremacy-network-of-orgs-and-agitators, or etc, then we should def make it. eg, I think the folks who bet yes on this are either sus themselves, or disagree with me and think isaac is sus. ye shall know them by their works or something like that, so what markets should we make to challenge each other to do good better?

(some refs for the "anti-semitism is designed to be laughed at" stuff might be sartre (or on wikipedia) or little joel.)

@L like, my preferred solution to this is not "we don't discuss fascism here because we are a nice safe space" but rather "this is the truthseeking zone. attempts to confuse others will be detected by your peers." and then the full cultural debate is gonna show up. liberals, conservatives, and any leftists who can stomach markets are going to be here to talk about it. I mean, well, I think they already are. and the white supremacists will show up in (some) markets and we'll have to bet against them about whether they win. thankfully it's all play money that can only be donated to charities an agentic white supremacist would quite literally hate with a passion, so hopefully it's not terribly negative externality to have them here outing themselves, on a prediction market, a system for calibrating beliefs against outcomes.

but let's do try to stay calibrated about which types of accusations are worth acting on and how, yeah? because there are a lot of accusations we need to work through fast, and a few of them might be true; we should endeavor to be at least as careful as the justice system ought to be, while also hurrying to prepare to aid each other in emergencies in case there really is conflict IRL.

@L I'm making fun of the fact that people can't tell questions about X from whatever specific belief about X they want to be angry about. (Similar to people who think that holding YES shares in a market means they must believe the true answer to the market's question is YES.) And that these sorts of people tend to type out their reports in the same exaggerated, highly emotional way. (Interestingly it's almost the same style as Trump's tweets.)

You have my permission to make whatever personal markets about me you'd like to make, under the condition that you N/A the market if I ask you to do so. (It's very unlikely that I'd ask, but I want to leave myself that clause just in case you come up with something I didn't consider.)

I'm Jewish, by the way.

@IsaacKing I don't currently feel eager to make "is sus?" markets, because I'd want to figure out what I want to ask. eg, not the "is this person an honorable member of the site" format, that test doesn't at all ask what I want to know. I was thinking more like, "will this person ever take <set of hard to hide actions that physically enact the bad thing directly>" but then I don't want it to be a literal assassination market.

@L What if I promise to never buy YES shares in such a market? Obviously I could use an alt account to do it, but if you believe that I care about my "honorableness" reputation on Manifold, that's a pretty strong disincentive.

Some evidence in favor of YES.

mainstream left side of the political spectrum

Could you clarify if that is the USA mainstream left, or the rest of the world ? Because mainstream left in USA is rightwing compared to most European central right parties.

@CromlynGames

Could you clarify if that is the USA mainstream left, or the rest of the world ?

I meant the American left, since that's where most prediction market users are. But that's not part of the resolution criteria, so it doesn't really matter.

mainstream left in USA is rightwing compared to most European central right parties.

That's almost certainly not true. I've noticed this is a common talking point in far-left ideological bubbles, but I've yet to see any actual evidence presented for it, and based on what I've seen from European culture it's not remotely the case. I'd also seen right-wing bubbles make similar claims in reverse. It's always politically convenient for a party to frame itself as less extreme than it really is, because then it gets to exploit people's desire to compromise and "meet in the middle" to get more of its own policies implemented.

@IsaacKing the existence of paid sick leave, much longer paid holidays, free at point of care healthcare, insulin at reasonable rates ect, suggests otherwise

@IsaacKing but my original point was - you were saying "it seems pretty important to Manifold's success that they're able to gain users from the mainstream left side of the political spectrum" - my point is that globally, USA left and lefter represents most of the population of the developed world (aka manifold's market of users). Europe alone has more than double the American population.

@CromlynGames did you flip something in that comment? I feel like some words may have gotten crossed, not sure if I misread

@L not enough coffee yet. 'us left and lefter' refers to people globally who would be described as left or lefter in the US. There's a huge amount of them.

yeah like, well, the real left is here, but severely disenfranchised compared to all the liberals who are at the right, ie mostly often vote-deciding, edge of the democratic party. so if you point at "the left" in the US merely from a "directional as a median voter", you mostly are pointing at a classical liberalism with progressive characteristics. but if you aren't stuck in the valley of undecided voters and can look around outside the dividing line of the decision of which way to vote, you find there are a lot of left*ists* who in the population who can't really suggest their policies. certainly socialism isn't the ideal system either, but hey, liberal market socialism would be a hell of a lot better than authoritarian state communism (or than state fascism, or even liberal state democracy). thing is, liberal market socialism is implemented approximately nowhere; I hear maybe vietnam has it going on and maybe cuba isn't as bad as the usa propaganda says but I haven't looked into it. mondragon is cool as hell. iww is a thing, but most people aren't in it (anyone can join I think?).

in any case, this kind of site was always going to attract fash. I'm surprised you decided to be the one to ring the bell that would get their attention, but websites like this always end up with a colony of them, because that's their jam when they join a new website. maybe some people are the jump to conclusions and yell type, but prediction markets are fundamentally adversarial. the left have to be on here knowing there are fash lurking, same as on any other website. that's... just how life is when they're attempting a run for authoritarians of the $culture $place.

We need to talk down those who they talk up. we need to learn to recognize them. we need to learn to repel them. They don't just go away on their own, since we shouldn't hurt them physically except in defense it's important to aim to contain rather than destroy. which means that when they try to make a laugh of Pushing Fash Aesthetics, one should push back, and warn people who echoed them that it isn't a funny joke.

we also need to get way better at amogus. there are real threats, and the difficulty of figuring out who they are is going to become dangerous. eg, I doubt scott is an OutToGetPpl, but there are some ppl I'm sus about being maybe OutToGetPpl and idk mate.

anyway, here's my leftism as a pile of imports from various documentation websites; note what's missing as much as what's included!

https://www.microsolidarity.cc/

https://localcircles.org/

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-consumption

https://participatoryeconomy.org/
https://rebelsteps.com/
https://howcapitalismworks.org/
https://activisthandbook.org/
https://www.youtube.com/@BeauoftheFifthColumn

@L whoah, slow down cowboy. I haven't accused anyone of anything (yet). Issac isn't alt-right, he's classic edgelord. He doesn't want anything more than attention and affection and sees noteriety as his USP. I've played that role before. It's a defence.

@L out of interest, are you active on https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/ ?

@CromlynGames I'm not going to give more bits about my identity publicly. if you already know who I am, contact me there. at some point someone will figure it out, and probably that won't be a big deal, but I'd rather delay that if that's all the same to y'all.

@L No, I don't know who you are, and I'm not really interested in figuring out cross connections. If you weren't there, I figured it might be a good place for your soul, that's all.