Often we have a lot of debate over whether Something Is Going To Happen, but usually it ends up Not Happening. I am increasingly confident that Nothing Ever Happens.
Summary: A month resolves YES if "Nothing Happened" in that month, according to the rules below. If "Something Happens" in a month, that month resolves NO.
Be ye warned, success in this market requires keeping up with every side of Manifold. Those who are not Extremely Online should think twice before investing heavily. But if you set up some limit orders, you can get a notification when it looks like a lot of mana is about to change hands!
Above is a list of the twenty most-traded unresolved markets on Manifold, as of 4/19/24.
I will try to keep this list updated, but be sure to check yourself! Markets which enter the top twenty after market creation become Potentially Something, and markets which leave the top twenty stop counting as Something.
A month will resolve YES iff no market in the top twenty at the time of its resolution resolves in that month because Something Happened. Note that a month does not resolve NO if a top-twenty market resolves because of Nothing Happening.
For example, if Vladimir Putin remains the president of Russia and the market about this resolves Yes, that's still a case of Nothing Ever Happening.
Likewise, if the main LK-99 market resolves YES in November then Something Has Happened and November resolves NO, but if the LK-99 market resolves NO then Nothing Is Continuing To Ever Happen and November would still be on track to resolve YES.
At the end of each month I will add in a new month. If a month resolves NO, I will also add in a new month and I will add an option for Nothing Else Happening in the month that just resolved NO.
I will not trade in this market, to keep myself unbiased about what counts as Something Ever Happening.
As for 4/19/24, I believe these resolutions are current potential Somethings that might Happen and resolve a month to No.
Anyone winning the US presidential election.
Anyone who isn't Biden or Trump winning the democratic or republican nominations.
Andrew Tate being found guilty.
AI being a major topic of discussion in the presidential debates.
Trump serving time.
AI getting gold in an international math Olympiad.
OpenAI hinting at or claiming to have AGI.
Joe Biden being impeached.
A law banning TikTok under it's current ownership being passed by congress
Donald Trump choosing his Vice Presidential Nominee
GPT-5 releasing.
Things that I want to point out as not counting as something happening:
Anything in a grab-bag megamarket. These are a routine part of the site now, I would not count them as something happening just because they get into the top 20.
This year being hotter or colder than the previous year. This is pretty boring, and the market will just slowly increase or decrease as data comes in through the year. Too gradual to be Something in either direction.
Happy Trading!
Related questions
Something Happened in April @Joshua
/Seeker/will-tiktok-be-banned-in-the-us-or-94b6eb88ffb0
A brief history of Nothing Happening:
In October, The Speaker of The House market resolves to Mike Johnson. October resolves No.
In November, The Sam Altman markets get big but none resolve that month. November resolves Yes.
In December, TIME person of the year resolves to Taylor Swift. December resolves No.
For the rest of December, nothing in the top 20 resolves. December Part 2 Resolves Yes.
In January, several things technically happen in the post new year's rush of resolutions but it was mostly boring. Resolves No, although it should have been Yes.
In February, the Sam Altman market that should have resolved in November finally resolved, February resolves No.
Now in March, there doesn't really seem to be anything on the horizon that can crack this top 20. I'd bet yes if i was allowing myself to bet on my own market!
@Joshua Looking forward the next months where something should happen is July and August for the RNC and DNC conventions respectively
@Joshua I find the resolution criteria around political markets confusing. At what point does a political figure winning an election or nomination the status quo. For example if Biden becomes 90% likely to win the election would him winning be something happening if the status quo of him being the president is kept and it was extremely likely to happen. And if that is something happening what is the difference between that and Biden winning the nomination.
@Joshua With that Sword of Manacles finally dropped, this market can perhaps begin to function normally again. I'll update the list soon.
TBH I think "We are stuck in recount land." would more count as Something Happened than "The election goes off without a hitch."
Though I think for the purposes of the current market it is "Anyone wins the election by the end of this month (which is not November)."
@JosephStronger This is a reasonable take, but "something happening" has always been a low bar in this market. It's to separate markets about an uncertain event from markets about near certainties like Putin remaining in power. And I don't want to change the criteria after so many people have bet on it.
However, give that this market is currently just held hostage by Sophia Wisdom not resolving her Sam Altman market, clearly something has gone wrong. I'll keep running this market, but I am going to go ahead and just make a new one with a higher, more vibes-based bar and a single resolution for bigger payout:
By the way, thinking ahead here I'm going to make a ruling that very general mega-markets will not count as "something happening" just because one of their many options resolved. For example, if /strutheo/what-will-happen-in-january-2024-ad gets into the top 20 I don't think counting it would be in the spirit of this market.
Now I did say that "Why Was Sam Altman Fired?" having any option resolve yes would count as something happening, so I'm going to stand by that. But in the future, I think I might only allow big unlinked markets to count if the specific option that resolves has enough traders that it would count by itself, regardless of how many traders the megamarket has overall.
I'll edit the rules to address this edge case when I do the next description update, if there are no objections.
Climate Change has happened! January resolves to no, and more months will now be added. I kinda don't want to add a January part 2 because it will just be about when Sophia finally gets around to resolving anything on Altman Firing to yes haha
@DanielTilkin Oh, would that not be in February? Doesn't she have to test all the puzzles in January first? Or is she resolving early if the 100% solution isn't possible?
@Joshua I'm running one right now that's on turn 28. If it succeeds, we'll have 7 successes and the market will be guaranteed to resolve 50% or YES even if we have to wait for another failure to actually resolve.
Not sure if you want to count "guaranteed to resolve 50% or YES" as a resolution.
@Mira The set-up here is to resolve based on what month the resolution itself happens in pacific time. For example, the hottest year market has been certain to resolve yes for a while but I only counted it when it finally resolved just now.
@Mira There's 7 successes now. Once you get to 7 failures as well (guaranteeing 50%), you'll resolve the market without waiting for the whole month to pass, right?