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For anyone interested in the cancer question, see this market, and this one.

I will never financially recover from this. I demand reparations.

@Jingliu Could you please resolve this market? I see no reason it needs to remain open.

The description of the issue mentions "resolves to the majority" rather than "resolves to %". In fact, we can see from the trade records that the efforts to make the outcome of the market a 36% chance come from a single user, not the majority. This user even created a limit order for Ṁ10,500 NO at 49%, manipulating the market to render the majority, who do not have sufficient mana, unable to change the outcome.

@cr I have a hard time firing out how to interpret this comment in any way other than being intentionally misleading. The description explicitly says "(YES if % > 50, No otherwise)", which you seem to be ignoring.

@IsaacKing In fact, the question description does not explicitly state that "%" refers to the "chance at close" (if that were the case, it would be more customary to say "resolves to %"). Considering the term "majority," it is more reasonable to interpret "%" as referring to the % within the "positions." Out of the 46 positions, approximately 87% of the users selected YES.

@cr Positions doesn’t have a listed “%”, it clearly refers to the metric where a % is listed (36%) in a big font at the top of the market. The wording is not unclear.

@june Yes, it is quite clear. In the question description, it does mention "majority," which typically refers to a number of individuals or votes constituting more than half of the total. Therefore, in this context, the term "percentage" naturally refers to the percentage of people involved. What made you think that "majority" referred to the percentage of mana?

@june In the sacred market, do you wish to use a significant amount of mana, like a whale, and manipulate the outcome to seek substantial profits, akin to an avid mana fan? Such intentions contradict the principles of Manifold. I will share this article with you, hoping it will provide some inspiration: Isaac King's Whales vs. Minnows.

@cr A market doesn't have to be tagged as a whale market to be resolved as one. Manifold prefers that a market resolves either as the creator intended it or wrote it (the spirit of the market or the letter of the market, favoring the latter).

I do think there is a case to resolve to majority of traders, and it will depend on how the market's creator intended the statement (note to creator: how you intended it when you wrote it; you shouldn't allow yourself to be swayed by arguments here). Appealing to principles is not a valid approach here, especially when you are arguing that it should be a "minnows" market instead. See also the comment below by a Manifold admin who has interpreted this as a whale market but has not declared it null and void as a result.

@Frogswap 👍 You're right.

Are we okay with a NO resolution?

@Jingliu If this is done, the liquidity subsidies you have invested in this issue, as well as the contributions of everyone else, will be almost entirely plundered by two individuals. The profits of these two individuals would be 100 times greater than those who are able to benefit.

In fact, in the pool of this issue, there are 1366 YES votes and 240 NO votes, with the YES votes accounting for the vast majority.

@Jingliu Yep 👍 Resolves NO

@Jingliu I'm not entirely sure if it is normal for the market to be manipulated so blatantly on Manifold. However, if you choose the 'NO resolution,' there may be at least 38 traders in the future who will choose not to invest their mana in such a market.

This is because they have responded to your question with honesty, goodwill, and friendliness (and they do not intend to make a significant profit in this market like the two manipulators). The entire process seemed promising, but the outcome was tarnished on the last day by the behavior of those who possess a substantial amount of mana.

@cr It is very normal; percent at close markets always end this way unless they are forgotten. You should see these more as gambling.

You have to be very careful to read resolution criteria and clarify any ambiguities as soon as possible, or you'll wind up taking a loss when the criteria diverge from what the market is trying to capture, even if you were right about the concept. There are plenty of markets that have resolved in surprising ways over technicalities.

If you think this all seems stupid, you're right, but a prediction market only works if it sticks to the criteria and participants try tooth-and-nail to make money.

@Jingliu The resolution of the problem depends on your will. Our understanding of 'majority' is subjective.

If you believe that 'majority' refers to the majority of people or the majority of votes, then the YES resolution is appropriate. If you believe that 'majority' refers to the majority of mana, then the NO resolution is appropriate.

@cr The interpretation depends on the intent of the market creator and that intent was conveyed pretty unambiguously in the description for experienced users at least (there have been many markets which resolve like this on Manifold and some by the same creator). I'd claim it's not too misleading for inexperienced users as well because the market % is a quite visible % this could be talking about and there's always the option to ask for clarification if something is unclear.

As for whether this kind of manipulation is normal, then yeah, when you make a market with such resolution criteria, the % at close is all that matters and the title is just noise. If I hadn't forgotten about the market, I would have manipulated it myself.

Since this will not (likely) happen in our lifetime, resolves to the majority (YES if % > 50, No otherwise)

This doesn't say that probability at close will be used 😉

Average probability seem like a better way to determine majority opinion, just saying 😂

@roma It just refers to the %, which is explicitly listed and is under 50. Average may be a slightly better mechanism but that’s not how this market was written.

@june Yeah, this seems like the most correct interpretation.

Yet, it's unfair to all these sincere believers in the power of medicine who have bet YES, and clearly the majority.

So perhaps, if @Jingliu changes the rules after the fact this will be more fair on balance even though changing the rules is unfair in itself.

@roma Markets are not a vote of how many people want them to resolve in their favor, that would defeat the whole point.

https://manifold.markets/june/will-the-linked-market-resolve-yes?r=anVuZQ

Will the linked market resolve YES?

50% chance. Per the criteria of the linked market, it is self-resolving. However, people keep betting yes above 50% because of the title, which is unrelated to the resolution criteria. How will it resolve? https://manifold.markets/Jingliu/will-we-ever-cure-cancer?r=anVuZQ [link preview]

@june https://manifold.markets/roma/this-market-resolves-the-same-as-wi

This market resolves the same as "Will the linked market resolve YES?"

50% chance. https://manifold.markets/june/will-the-linked-market-resolve-yes [link preview]

https://manifold.markets/post/selfresolving-markets-why-they-dont

tldr: This is a terrible idea that has failed spectacularly so many times! Don't do it! Instead, a better idea is to just have the market resolve based on whether we actually cure cancer.

For other questions where that's not an option, create a poll (not a market, a poll where users cast votes). Then you can create a prediction market that resolves to the poll result. Here's an example: https://manifold.markets/SneakySly/at-the-end-of-2023-will-manifold-us

For this market, it's a bit late, but next time don't make the market like this.

Self-resolving markets: why they don't work and what to do instead

When it's hard to resolve a question the normal way, people often try to create markets for questions like "Will we cure cancer?" or "Will Musk make Twitter better?" that resolve like: "YES if the market is >50%, NO otherwise". tldr: This is a terrible idea that has failed spectacularly so many times! Don't do it! Instead, a better idea is to create a poll (not a market, a poll where users cast votes). Then you can create a prediction market that resolves to the poll result. Here's an example: https://manifold.markets/SneakySly/at-the-end-of-2023-will-manifold-us Self-resolving markets are markets that resolve based on the market itself, instead of the author deciding how to resolve them. In general, this isn't a good idea, as many experiments have demonstrated: the reason markets work is because participants make profits based on whether they are correct or not, and in a self-resolving market there is nothing to actually tie the market resolution to the real-world question that was asked, so there's no reason to expect the market to have anything to do with the question. But there are several reasons people are interested in exploring them: 1) Asking questions where determining an answer is expensive. For example, it might take a massive amount of data collection work or it might cost millions of dollars to run a randomized controlled trial. 2) Asking highly subjective questions, such as: Should Universal Basic Income exist in the US? At the end of 2023 will manifold users think Twitter has changed for the better? Did the NSA work to weaken post-quantum cryptography? Did Hans Niemann cheat against Magnus Carlsen? Is supersymmetry realized in nature? These questions are often poll-like, and indeed resolving to the result of a poll is a common way to design them. 3) Many blockchain systems use protocols for forming a consensus resolution that are similar to self-resolution, and they have similar dangers, and it's interesting to explore how to make them more robust. For example, Polymarket uses an oracle where token holders essentially vote with cryptocurrency to settle disputed resolutions, and there are a couple examples of misresolutions. I think it's valuable to find tweaks to make such markets work better, and valuable to have experiments demonstrating how they can go wrong. If you are an author thinking about creating a market along these lines, I think these methods work much better: Resolving to the result of a poll. Examples: https://manifold.markets/SneakySly/at-the-end-of-2023-will-manifold-us and https://manifold.markets/jack/will-we-believe-sbf-committed-willf. While they aren't perfect, polls tend to work a lot better at getting a reasonable result and being mostly (but not 100%) robust to market manipulation. Some random chance of resolving the normal way, otherwise resolve N/A. Imagine a market predicting the result of an expensive experimental trial. This mechanism means you only have to actually run the trial some fraction of the time, and it is incentive-compatible (you can't profit on the market by manipulating it). Example: https://manifold.markets/jack/does-gdpr-require-selfserviceautoma. Downside is that profit incentives for making good predictions are correspondingly lower. And, if you really want to resolve-to-mkt despite the flaws: If you are ok with some author subjectivity, you can say "Resolves to MKT but the author will override if it looks like market manipulation". This has empirically worked ok for many low-stakes markets, but you do have to acknowledge that it becomes very subjective. The line between voting your beliefs and manipulating the market can be very blurry. Or, if you want to avoid that sort of subjective resolution mechanism, you should at least include a) a random chance of resolving the normal way based on external data, and b) protections against last-minute price manipulation such as a randomized close time or quiescence criteria. E.g. https://manifold.markets/Yev/will-biden-be-president-on-october-fb3d01633429 I do not believe this is as robust against manipulation as a simple poll, while being far more complicated, but at least it's better than a resolve-to-mkt without those features. The problem is that the reason prediction markets work is that participants profits are based on whether they are correct or not. If the market resolution is instead based only on what the market participants say, and not based on any external data about the actual question, then it can become completely disconnected from the question it is trying to answer - it's a Keynesian beauty contest.