The person must have been credibly motivated by the profits of a Manifold market. It must have been a death, lifespan or assassination market about the victim.
It's insufficient if the subject is murdered, but there is no credible profit motive from that Manifold market. For example, if their neighbor murders them, but the murderer didn't bet on death in the Manifold market, nor had they been compensated by anyone who did, then that wouldn't count.
It's also insufficient if a random Manifold user commits murder about someone with an unrelated type of market about them. The market's resolution must be based on the death or lifespan of the victim.
It can still count if the murderer never cashes it out a position (in case they were unable to, or something prevented them).
If we never see a credible case of this, then resolves as "No" in 2035-Jan.
1,000
3.00@enemel I do not think it is appropriate to create markets based on someone's death. It is important to remember that these prediction markets are just for fun and should not be taken too seriously. It is not appropriate to profit off of someone's death and I do not support the creation of such markets.
@enemel Lots -- if you want to be well-calibrated on world events, the probability of the president dying is relevant.
Motivation: it's obvious to me that people are exaggerating the dangers of prediction markets. Yes, even the edgy ones.
Death markets are a bad incentive? That sounds logical -- but empirically, I've never even heard of a stock short-seller assassinating a CEO.
To be fair, people do sometimes murder a partner for insurance money. But those are a pretty tiny percent of murders.
And anyone with a murdered spouse is immediately a suspect. Even more so if their insurance promises a payout. Similarly, if someone cashed out money from a death bet, that would paint a legal target on their back. Maybe if it was sufficiently-crypto-anonymous, with sufficiently-strong paper trail evasion. But then the market size would be stunted, due to barriers to participation.
If we see this happen on Manifold, I'll resolve it Yes, as stated above. And hey, the world is a very big place, lots of weird stuff will happen. Some people do actually try to get insurance money for murdering their spouse.
But when people complain about having edgy markets? On Manifold? On a play money market? I'll say it loudly: death markets should absolutely be on Manifold. Along with lots of other offensive markets. Anything less would show the platform had been politically compromised. Though there might be market-preserving compromises, like clicking a disclaimer before seeing whatever the fuck markets a Richard Spencer-type would make, etc.
@Jotto999 I agree that assassination markets are fine, but in those cases where political forces overlap with ethical ones (and one might hope for a good bit of overlap), it is morally wrong to object to political compromise. Making a nutty free speech argument undermines the better argument that if this sort of market is dangerous, it is better to be open and well-calibrated on how dangerous. I believe that a 1.3% chance of this market, or another assassination marker on MM, causing a death is ridiculously high; the problem is not that this market exists, the problem is that no one wants to bid it to where it should be because of small profits and long horizons. We should have lots of markets like this, subsidized, and if the actual predictions of motivated investors ever tops 0.00001%, then we can talk about shutting them down.
@Duncan I agree that assassination markets are fine, but in those cases where political forces overlap with ethical ones (and one might hope for a good bit of overlap), it is morally wrong to object to political compromise. Making a nutty free speech argument undermines the better argument that if this sort of market is dangerous, it is better to be open and well-calibrated on how dangerous.
What is the clearest example of a market that you expect would cause harm? What could the harm be well-defined as, if I made a Manifold market about it?
I believe that a 1.3% chance of this market, or another assassination marker on MM, causing a death is ridiculously high; the problem is not that this market exists, the problem is that no one wants to bid it to where it should be because of small profits and long horizons.
Note that if the death price is trading too high, that actually reduces the profitability of betting on death. The would-be assassin gets a much better deal if they can buy it 0.00001%, versus 1%.
We should have lots of markets like this, subsidized, and if the actual predictions of motivated investors ever tops 0.00001%, then we can talk about shutting them down.
0.00001% would be a low-end estimate for a developed world base rate. In the U.S. it's >0.00005% per year, assuming I didn't mess up the arithmetic just now. Why would we shut anyone down for a prediction that's merely around the population base rate? Or did you mean a very different number?
@Jotto999 I don't think it's a good idea to post ideas for harmful markets, but it shouldn't be hard to think of a market that you think the mods would reasonably consider harmful.
I could be wrong, but isn't the base rate right at where we should look for relevant change on the margin? We want to look at all the murders, plus one.
@Jotto999 I think the confusion is when Duncan said 0.00001%, they were talking about this market ("Will anyone murder for a Manifold assassination market") not about a life/death market ("Will Biden die in 2023?").
And as Duncan said, the odds on this are too low for Manifold to predict well. As of this writing, https://manifold.markets/Nu%C3%B1oSempere/this-question-will-resolve-positive-5c753f5a33e1 is at 97% (which is quite far from the correct answer of 100%)
@Duncan I don't think it's a good idea to post ideas for harmful markets, but it shouldn't be hard to think of a market that you think the mods would reasonably consider harmful.
...Thus preventing me from attempting to properly estimate the actual risk and harm.
@jack And as Duncan said, the odds on this are too low for Manifold to predict well. As of this writing, https://manifold.markets/Nu%C3%B1oSempere/this-question-will-resolve-positive-5c753f5a33e1 is at 97% (which is quite far from the correct answer of 100%)
Thank you, I misunderstood. I agree the mispricing makes it less informative. Such opportunity cost and low-frequency mispricing is a rampant problem on betting markets. Out of curiosity, has anyone ever argued this mispricing would worse/create the social externality of death markets? Or is nobody making that argument?
@Jotto999 I've certainly argued many times that a market that is fundamentally mispriced can be worse than no market at all, because it can be more misleading than helpful. For example, this was a major concern on nuclear risk markets such as https://manifold.markets/jack/will-a-nuclear-weapon-detonate-in-n-6edbcd23a9f1 (my linked post discusses how I try to interpret the probabilities, but most readers will just see the headline number).
@Jotto999 How about this as an example https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/personal-pentesting-will-anyone-on# except imagine it was created by someone else without the author's permission, with malicious intent. Such a market would be deleted by the mods under the community guidelines ("Markets and comments revealing people’s personal private information." are disallowed) so I don't think posting it here is giving anyone new ideas.
See https://help.manifold.markets/community-guidelines for more harmful types of markets
@jack An idea I just had, as a supplement to the problem amplified markets try to tackle:
Suppose if the rate of being loaned mana could vary, depending on the odds you were buying at.
Example: suppose buying YES at 99% loaned me the mana way faster, than if I bought that market at 90%. That way there isn't such an opportunity cost jump. And buying at 99.9% could loan me back my mana extremely quickly, such that I might as well do it if I really believe the probability is much higher than that. As a limitation, the loaned mana cannot be used on the same market.
@Jotto999 Right, and in principle Manifold could implement a margin trading system and let you make leveraged trades based on some risk engine. But it's really really hard to get it right and really easy for people to accidentally go bankrupt.