Will Nothing Ever Happen By Halloween?
236
5.7K
2.6K
resolved Oct 25
Resolved
NO

Edit 10/18: Note that the current require trader for a market to potentially be "Something" is ~1.2K traders, and this amount is always increasing with the active markets. See the comments for a full list.

Often we have a lot of debate over whether Something Is Going To Happen, but usually it ends up Not Happening. I am beginning to suspect that Nothing Ever Happens.

Above is a list of the most popular markets at the time of market creation.

Looking at this list, the last time that Something Happened was in April when Donald Trump was arraigned for the first time. Nothing Has Ever Happened since then, by these standards.

This question resolves YES iff by market close no question listed above, or any question that has as many traders as one of those questions at time of its resolution, resolves because Something Happened. This means the minimum required trader count is constantly increasing.

Notably, this market does not resolve if a market resolves because of Nothing Happening.

For example, if the main LK-99 market resolves YES by Halloween then Something Has Happened and this resolves NO, but if the LK-99 market resolves NO then Nothing Is Continuing To Ever Happen and this market would still be on track to resolve YES.

I will not trade in this market, to keep myself unbiased about what counts as Something Ever Happening.

Get Ṁ200 play money

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predicted NO

It has been decided: Despite people thinking nothing ever happens, things do generally happen! Alas, we run risks of paradoxes if they didn't ever happen.

predicted YES

Wellll shiiiit

With the resolution of /SimonGrayson/who-will-be-the-next-speaker-of-the-0b49bf53ad12 with 1,260 traders, something has finally happened! Thanks for trading everyone!

You can join us for more Meme-Casting at

sold Ṁ49 of YES

This has been such a fun market. Just look at its chart, it's crazy! Unfortunately despite my quotes about better epistemics and following this market so closely, I've lost so much mana here and learned so many lessons too. What a great market idea, kudos to @Joshua for both creating and running this market proper.

These are the markets with enough traders!

bought Ṁ1,000 of YES

@Joshua shouldn't this market close on the 30th because it's "by Halloween?"

@cc6 Hmmm, good point. Unfortunately, the description says "by market close" so we do have a small contradiction here. Would like to hear from others about this, would changing the close date by a day make sense to people?

Also, regular reminder that the speaker of the house market almost has enough traders to count as something happening!

predicted YES

@Joshua It makes a big difference because they usually decide the speaker on a Tuesday

Alright, updated to Oct 30th at midnight PST. I've said "before halloween" in the comments so I hope this was generally understood.

predicted YES

@Joshua how did you decide the 1.2k cutoff? I remember it used to be 1k — what is the formula that determines when it increases

predicted NO

@cc6 Threshold is the smallest number of traders on any of the markets in the initial screencap at time of (this) market close

@cc6 The cut-off is that it has to have more traders at resolution than any of the markets that had 1K at the time this market was created. The lowest traded of those markets is the AI Competitive Programming market... which it just crossed now that I check! If it stays ahead and resolves by market close, that's something happening:

predicted YES

@Joshua Thanks

predicted NO

@Joshua this site should really have a feature where if you try to create a market with "by" in the title it sends someone to egg your house and then changes it to "before"

predicted NO

@ErickBall incorrect. "by" has a distinct definition than "before": "before or during"

predicted NO

@ErickBall buuut you're right, people get it confused all the time. certainly are better ways to word it. my current goto is "by the end of"

predicted NO

@Stralor right, if they actually implement this it should prompt you to choose "before" or "by the end of".

predicted NO

@ErickBall yeah, thanks for putting up with my earlier snappiness. I do think "by" on its own can and is used appropriately (like here) but enough people misuse it that it is a problem. but so convenient to only need two letters!

predicted NO

@Stralor oh I thought this one was a case where it was pretty ambiguous. Like if my boss tells me to get him that TPS report "by tomorrow" I'm not gonna work late to send it out today.

bought Ṁ18 of NO

I put a big limit order on the current price, if anyone wants it

predicted NO

If the Sudoko market resolves yes, would that count as a No for this market?

Correct, as long as it resolves before Halloween

These are the markets that currently meet the trader count requirement for this market:

@Joshua If Vladimir Putin remains President of Russia, will this count as Something Happening? Probably not relevant for this market but could matter in the future.

@Kraalnaxx

Yeah, I'll repost this older comment so it's more visible:

It should also be noted that the Speaker of The House market resolving may well count as something happening for this market if it can get just a few more traders.