Latest updates from NYT:
Biden Endorses Israeli Proposal for a Cease-Fire in Gaza: Live Updates - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

"The Israeli military said on Friday that its forces had advanced into central Rafah, pushing even deeper into the southern Gaza city despite an international backlash and pressure from allies to scale back the latest offensive."

@TimothyJohnson5c16 @ManifoldPolitics @Joshua at this point I don't expect much but I want to atleast get this in before midnight. Can we get a ruling on this latest article? I think there's one especially compelling part which is why I bring this up.

Israeli commandoes backed by tanks and artillery were operating in central Rafah, the Israeli military said in a statement

Commercially available satellite imagery taken by Planet Labs on Thursday also showed that the Israeli military had set up positions in parts of central Rafah

This next one is especially compelling as it references how you said we'd want to see the Defense Dept contradicted, i.e that Israel is providing with an invasion despite the U.S. warnings:

Israel has followed through with its offensive in Rafah despite concerns from close allies like the United States that any major military assault would place civilians in grave danger

Key words: has followed through. Not is following through, they already have. The NYT is calling out this already happened. There is no equivication in this article and I don't think any reasonable reader could take away from this article that Israel hasn't invaded Rafah.

@mint I swear the NYT are lurking this market and trying to ruin my life.

That is... still not it. They could very easily say this directly, and they don't. They could just say "Israel has proceeded with a major military assault despite..." or "Israel's now-full-scale invasion has drawn criticism from..." and this is still short of that.

@Joshua well, I've now sold my position in both markets so I guess this can resolve NO. If we are being honest, I think this market was run well below the standards of an official ManifoldPolitics market. The original resolution criteria was vague so it's normal to clarify it once in the comments. That was 17 days ago when you said:

I am updating the description to clarify that this market will resolve based on the New York Times or Wall Street Journal reporting an "invasion" using that exact word.

When that happened, this market should have resolved YES immediately and everyone would have understood. If you felt that for some reason it still couldn't resolve, it probably meant that there is a serious deficiency in the market that was incurable and it should have resolved N/A. Then these situations don't get worse.

This wasn't a prize market and though I lost mana on this market, I gained on the other market by selling at the top, so it's a relatively small overall loss, it doesn't upset me. But as someone who is dedicating to writing high quality markets with clear resolution criterias, and seeing Manifold succeed, I hope the lessons from this market can be taken to future ones.

@mint Fair feedback, I'm definitely re-reading all these comments before I make another market about Israel.

The market for next month is still young if you have suggestions:

@Joshua I'm not going to participate in that market because I feel it has some of the same failings as this market: you can never know for sure when it's happened. After a read of that Wikipedia article, especially the "timeline" portion, my read is that it has already happened. It also makes the assumption that at some point Wikipedia should update to report a full-scale invasion occurred, just like happened with the main Israel article, but I see no reason for that to happen. It's completely accurate to call whats happening an offensive and operation, and to show the scale of the operation quoting facts, like the advancement of tanks in central Rafah.

If I was making a market about this topic (which I might do) it'd probably be along the lines of: Will the U.S. claim that Israeli crossed their Red Line was in Gaza? But an issue with that market is it'd probably be a pretty low %. The advantage is, it'll never be unclear. Earlier on in the conflict I might make a market like "Will IDF tanks enter the center of Rafah?" because that can also be definitely determined from media reports.

At this point the most likely situation is israel occupies all of rafah without it ever being called an invasion

@ManifoldPolitics @Joshua

2 hours ago the WSJ published an article titled "Israeli Tanks Close In on Central Rafah as Global Uproar Grows"

The article includes the following excerpts:

Israeli tanks advanced further into Rafah on Tuesday, according to witnesses, as the Israeli military said it was expanding operations in the southern Gaza city amid growing international condemnation.

The tanks passed near the Al-Awda mosque, a central Rafah landmark, Palestinians in the city told The Wall Street Journal. The Israeli military didn’t comment on the specifics of its push into Rafah, but Israel’s Army Radio said the military had added a brigade to the five already operating in the city and troops were engaging in close-quarters combat with Hamas.

Israel for months has said it wants to destroy the last of Hamas’s military structure in Rafah and disrupt the U.S.-designated terrorist group’s smuggling network from Egypt into Gaza. But the U.S. has repeatedly warned Israel that it needs to do more to protect civilians.

The article doesn't use "invasion," nor "assault," nor "offensive." Though, according to the clarified resolution critieria (but also the original resolution criteria), using "invasion" is not required:

Regardless of use of the word "invasion", the NYT or the WSJ unambiguously report in more than one article that the conflict has now escalated into the long-anticipated "full-scale" military action. This reporting must make it clear that new events are a major escalation from what has previously been often called as a "limited operation".

Notably, the criteria requires "more than one" article. Can we consider this article a qualifying article according to the resolution criteria, meaning that if the expanded military action is reported in one addition article, it would be sufficient to resolve YES?

@mint I read this and figured it didn't matter in the scope of the discussion so far, would be hilarious if I was wrong.

Busy with some stuff right now but will read in detail later, thanks for linking 👍

@Joshua While the airstrike is hellish, and the continuing advance is a constant escalation, I don't think the WSJ is describing either as "the long-anticipated full-scale military action".

I think the same goes for the NYT's coverage today of the strike and advance. The Times cites a US State Department spokesperson saying they don't consider things a "major mitilitary operation" and the don't go on to disagree with him or cite anyone disagreeing with him on that point:

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said Tuesday that the United States had expressed “deep concern” to Israel’s government about the strike and asked for more information about the attack and resulting conflagration.

“Israel has said that it might have been that there was a Hamas ammo dump near the area where they took the strike,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s a very important factual question that needs to be answered.”

Mr. Miller said the U.S. position is that “we do not want to see major military operations take place” in Rafah on a scale similar to previous Israeli attacks in Khan Younis and Gaza City. “At this point, we have not seen a military operation on the scale of those previous operations,” Mr. Miller said.

I've looked through the rest of the WSJ and NYT articles and found nothing calling the operation an invasion or saying it has become a full-scale military operation.

@Joshua I agree that the NYT isn't there but I think the WSJ should be viewed in isolation, as the resolution criteria is clear either of them is needed for YES, not just one. So I would hope that if at one point the bar is met for WSJ, we can't just say "well the NYT isn't there yet."

And as I've mentioned, both the US and Israel have reasons to not consider this as crossing the red line (as that's such a headache!) so unless something literally genocide level happens I don't expect them to say it. But that doesn't matter to the resolution criteria. There isn't a market about whether the US will consider the red line crossed (although that would have been a good market).

Since we aren't counting opinion pieces, I wouldn't expect them to straight out come out and say that the Americans are wrong and the red line was crossed, because that's determined only in the eyes of the beholder. The only thing they can do is show it doesn't match the reality on the ground by, for example as they did in the WSJ piece, show that Israel is deepening the offensive with tanks in the center of Rafah and committing another battalion.

It's ok if you don't think this article goes far enough, but it would be helpful if you could provide an actual realistic example of what would need to be said to count. Not just general outlines as are currently in the description. Does it literally have to be...

Israel has escalated their operation in Rafah to be a full scale invasion

Because I don't think that bar will ever be reached (it just doesn't seem like something that would be said in a non-opinion piece because that statement is very politically charged and there are other less sensationalized ways to report that). And I don't think (though happy to be shown to be wrong) that's what the market has been betting on. So if that's where the bar is I'd appreciate you straight up saying it.

@mint

Israel has escalated their operation in Rafah to be a full scale invasion

The bar isn't this high or this specific, but every outlet has so far been very clear that there is an anticipated version of this operation that is "full scale". They could also be clear that the operation has stopped being limited and started being that anticipated, escalated action. The WSJ isn't saying that right now.

@Joshua

They could also be clear that the operation has stopped being limited and started being that anticipated, escalated action.

How about two separate NYT pieces posted today that, coincidentally, reference both "long anticipated" and "escalated"?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/world/middleeast/all-eyes-on-rafah.html

For months, the phrase has been a touchstone in the social and cultural dialogue around Israel’s war against Hamas in the region. It has periodically trended on social media, particularly as Israeli military attacks in the city — located in the southern Gaza Strip, along the Egyptian border — have escalated

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/29/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah/a-senior-israeli-official-said-that-the-war-would-last-at-least-through-the-end-of-the-year

The military said another three soldiers were killed and three more seriously wounded on Tuesday in Rafah, where Israeli forces have been advancing in a long-anticipated assault.

@mint I'm trying to move away from the "look for these specific words" model! Neither of those articles is clearly stating that the operation has now changed from limited to full-scale.

Looking beyond the NYT or the WSJ, I don't see anyone saying this. The airstrike is horrible but the hypothetical full-scale invasion would be unmistakable. This is probably a higher bar than just a transition in langauge to describing the assault as an invasion.

@Joshua

1. As I've mentioned, I don't see why we are "looking beyond the NYT/WSJ". The resolution criteria only requires looking at either of these sources. It doesn't say "a consensus of media" it says NYT or WSJ. Not even both. This should be the least controversial point.

2. I understand that you are trying to move away from specific words, that was evident when the first usages of "invasion" didn't count, but that has led to confusion about what would count as it appears very subjective when it really shouldn't. That is why we would like to see even just 1 example of a sentence or excerpt that would meet your bar. We understand that it won't be the only criteria required, it's just an example to show that the bar actually exists.

Right now we are in the pattern of back and forth. You say that the resolution criteria would be "unmistakable" but based on how many clarifications and criteria changes have been issued this is clearly not the case. Please provide an example of an excerpt that would unmistakable YES.

@mint It's an understandable frustration, and yes the market does just resolve on the WSJ/NYT. No one sentence is going to be enough though! The example of a yes resolution I provided was that two entire articles report that we're now at a full-scale offensive.

I don't want to fixate on the term "full-scale" but that is the exact term that we see most often used to distinguish the scenario we are in now from the scenario under which Biden threatened to withhold weapons shipments.

So, although any one sentence shouldn't be enough to resolve, what you want is something contradicting that statement above from the defense department.

For example:

"Israel's advance into Rafah is now on the scale of previous major military assaults on Khan Younis and Gaza City"

@Joshua alright, this example is completely fair, thank you for providing it. I will keep this in mind as I consider new articles.

Accepting that I panic sold and miscalculated in this market re: profit, I just want to express moral disgust at the fact that we have tanks in central Rafah, mass clearing operations across a swathe of the city, video of refugees being bombed directly in broad daylight, and the reporting is still in a range that serious people could argue is ambiguous as to whether there has been a Rafah invasion. I agree with Martin Randall on Discord; synonyms are not equivocation. Words like "offensive" when not qualified by "limited" are the same as invasion.

The spirit of these questions so clearly started in one place, and now rests in a sort of pathetic acquiessence to what most of the world sees as transparent propaganda. If anything, the expected resolution here is more biased than the Times/WaPo reporting. If you ask a reporter from these publications six months from now, "did Israel invade Rafah in May?" they will almost certainly say Yes, and yet this market will say No as a matter of record for what a "prediction market" is.

@Panfilo The exact word choice matters because "the invasion" has been long anticipated. Lines were drawn over this, and ultimatums were issued. The major example being that Biden said he'd withhold weapons shipments if Israel proceeded with an invasion. Other countries also said in advance that they'd be strongly opposed to a Rafah invasion.

The media reported all this in the form of this binary question of "will there or won't there be an invasion?" and caused the public to ask that question with that word. This market is simply trying to operationalize that question asked by the media, and so naturally it also resolves to how the media answer that question.

All that said, I'd do many things differently if I were making this market again. A market that has massive shifts based on clarification in the comments is a market that should have had a more clear description from the start.

Hopefully the July version is better:

Criteria updated, market re-opened. New article from the Times today:

Despite an international court order to stop its assault on Rafah, Israel says it will continue its operation, trying to walk a line between not angering its American allies too much while trying to achieve strategic aims that it considers too important to abandon.

For now, after many weeks of admonitions from the White House, both the Israelis and the Americans are characterizing this as a “limited operation,” allowing the Israelis to proceed, though more slowly and cautiously than they had in other parts of Gaza.

@ManifoldPolitics

tl;dr - good reasoning about why the standard hasn't been met. but can you please clarify that the bright-line is for this market?

--

i have followed this market and the associated event quite closely. i appreciate the hard work you're doing to moderate this, and largely agree with the analysis you have provided. the nyt has not really met the spirit of this question yet.

in addition to the reasoning about why the "invasion" standard has not yet been met, i'd like to suggest is that you provide a few hypotheticals or more quantifiable criteria for what causes this to resolve for the "invasion" outcome.

10 days ago when polymarket was getting fuzzy, the clarification was "I am updating the description to clarify that this market will resolve based on the New York Times or Wall Street Journal reporting an "invasion" using that exact word."

so, when a nyt reporter used "invasion" to refer to the rafah operation, i flipped my positioning and took a decent mana hit, thinking that it satisfied the criteria. the subsequent clarification was "but that's just one reporter, not the whole nyt." then a few more reporters used "invasion" and then the clarification was "but the nyt is still prevaricating by using other words."

these are all good arguments, but i currently feel like i'm just flipping a coin whenever some new nyt coverage is published on wether or not it will satisfy the criteria for this market.

would "invasion" in a headline resolve this?
would 3 or 5 or 10 nyt reporters using "invasion" resolve this?
would a nyt article quoting an administration official saying "invasion" resolve this?

thanks.

@BobSnodgrass Fair questions! Answering from my personal account here to be a bit more informal. I should try to be extra strict on questions about formal clarifications needing to be edited into the description itself.

Anyways, I have to confess I never imagined that the Times would be so inconsistent in its reporting between its own articles and even its own paragraphs when I made this market.

I wouldn't base another market on an expectation that the NYT will be self-consistent, but I think it is too late into this market to change that expectation.

So if I were going to try to define a "bright-line" as you say, it would be a definition of self-consistency. I think that's really hard to do, and if I did it wrong that's worse than not defining a bright line at all. So I'm hesitant to do so.

That said, I think it's much better to experiment with risks like this now while Manifold is fully play money so I do think I want to try to propose a bright line and see what traders think

Once again, this is just a proposal I'm posting from my personal account for feedback and not final unless added to the criteria:

An example of one situation in which this market would resolve YES:

The top section of the NYT Israel-Hamas Page has a day where no headline/sub-headline uses the words "offensive", "operation", "assault", "raid" to describe Israel's ongoing activity in Rafah and DOES have at least one headline/sub-headline in which the Times directly describes Israel's ongoing activities in Rafah as an "invasion". This counts even if it is qualified as a "limited" invasion or similar. Note that these conditions consider only direct word choices by the NYT, and any quotations in headlines would be disregarded.

@Joshua

appreciate the thoughtfulness and transparency here. also, thanks for taking my comment in the spirit with which it was offered: we're all just mucking about with play money and figuring out how to handle the myriad weird edge cases.

- "bright line" -

i like this direction. i was looking at coverage of other recent armed conflicts recently. wapo, for example, ran "russia invades ukraine" as the headline - no subhead or nothing. that's a pretty extreme example, and unlikely to happen here.

as we're drilling down to head / subhead level, i think your proposed brightline is a bit too restrictive on the "no uses of hedging words" part. i think some use is ok if the headline chooses "invasion" or if the subhead and body both emphasize "invasion". two specific examples of what i'm imagining could both quality:

a) unambiguous use of invasion in headline, some "israel expands its operation in rafah with new forces" kind of stuff in the subhead

b) headline doesn't use invasion, but subhead AND article body heavily emphasizes invasion. e.g. "israel's rafah offensive expands despite ICC order"
subhead: "new forces are deployed to support the weeks-long invasion"
body: "the invasion, going into its Xth week..."

- "experiment" -

it's just fake internet points at this point; the stakes are low. but making a good manifold product means making good markets, which means figuring out how to handle edge cases. i understand the hesitation, but i think not trying is worse than doing it wrong. and i don't think you're doing it wrong!

@BobSnodgrass I agree with your thoughts here. I definitely think that

no headline/sub-headline uses the words "offensive", "operation", "assault", "raid" to describe Israel's ongoing activity in Rafah and DOES have at least one headline/sub-headline in which the Times directly describes Israel's ongoing activities in Rafah as an "invasion"

Is too strict and does not fit the resolution criteria. As I mentioned in a previous comment, it would probably sound strange from a linguistic perspective if the NYT literally only used the word invasion. We can consider the larger Israeli operation in Gaza as an "invasion," and attacks on cities themselves are probably better classified as "offensives" or "assaults." If we use a comparison to Ukraine, when Russian troops stepped over the border, we of course saw reports about a Russian invasion. But when Russia captured Bakhmut, or any other city, NYTimes articles never call that an "invasion of Bakhmut," they call it an assault or an offensive. This is an example from one article, but I couldn't find any article describing an "invasion of Bakhmut" or something similar. A Google Search for exactly "invasion of Bakhmut" returns 0 results.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/world/europe/bakhmut-ukraine-russia-war.html

Moscow has declared victory in its long, bloody assault.

___

The way I see it, this is how this market has evolved:

1. Will resolve YES if the NYT unequivocally reports a ground invasion of Rafah. It must be an actual invasion and can't be a limited raid or covert operation. Using the word "invasion" will be a great indication that an invasion has started but this isn't necessary for a YES resolution.

2. Oh, it looks like the word invasion was used, but it's only one reporter and they also used synonyms of the word invasion, so it's a bit iffy. Let's wait and see if other reporters also use this word.

3. Huh, now most reporters covering Rafah are using the word "invasion," and they are reporting about tanks rolling through and bombs falling on central Rafah, but it looks like they still used "operation" and "offensive" x times. WE ARE HERE --> Now using the words "assault" and "offensive" immediately precludes a YES resolution, ONLY "invasion" can be used.

tl;dr: this market went from "we want to see when the NYT reports an actual ground invasion of Rafah, not a raid or covert operations. If they use the word "invasion" it'll definitely be sufficient, but that's not a requirement" to "The NYT must use ONLY the word invasion and NO other word. Linguistics be damned!"

@ManifoldPolitics Though you didn't explicitly say it, I take issue with this comment because it implies that those two paragraphs show that the NYT doesn't think an invasion has begun. But it definitely doesn't. They are reporting on what the Americans and Israeli's think, and not taking any position on it.

both the Israelis and the Americans are characterizing this as a “limited operation,” allowing the Israelis to proceed, though more slowly and cautiously than they had in other parts of Gaza.

I don't really see how this is relevant to the market as they are reporting on the opinions of the US & Israel, which have strong political reasons to consider this a limited operation and not an invasion. The only way we can evaluate this market is based on facts reported the NYT, not the thinking of officials.

On the topic of examples that would definitely resolve this market YES, given the criteria clarifications, I think something like this is appropriate. It explicitly avoids using the trap of specific words, of which there are many synonyms, and sticks to what facts would indicate that a ground invasion has unequivocally occurred in Rafah.

This market will resolve YES if the NYT or WSJ definitely reports the presence of Israeli ground units in the city of Rafah itself, not in surround suburbs, and not in the capacity of a limited operation. An example that would resolve this market as YES is: "On Sunday, Israel ground troops entered central Rafah, marking a sharp escalation from the original limited operation to control the border and surrounding suburbs. A representative of the Israeli government confirmed to the Times that the next stage of the Rafah operation would the elimination of Hamas militants located within, and below, central Rafah itself."

I think this is fair because as far as I've seen, we haven't seen something this definitive from the times yet. IMO, the best argument for this market still being open isn't those two paragraphs you quoted about the personal opinions of American and Israeli officials, and definitely isn't the inclusion of "assault" or "operation" X times in an article while "invasion" appears Y times, it's that there is still the chance of an escalation even further. For example, the NYT reported these quotes, not all together or in the same article:

Palestinian news media reported that an Israeli strike had killed one person in central Rafah and that there was also fighting in the eastern suburbs of the city. Strikes were also reported in other parts of the territory, and the Israeli military confirmed that it also continued to operate in Jabaliya, northern Gaza.

Israeli forces dropped leaflets ordering people to evacuate and launched a military offensive this month in the eastern part of Rafah, and they have been advancing yard-by-yard deeper into the city.

The Israeli military has been moving in studied advances into Rafah since May 6, so far without the kind of heavy bombardment it used against other parts of Gaza, after telling people to evacuate parts of the city. About 815,000 have fled, many of them on foot, the United Nations said this week, most of them bound for the war-ravaged cities of Khan Younis and Deir al Balah farther north, and the coastal village of Al-Mawasi.

All of these indicate that there is room for further escalation into the center of Rafah, which is why I feel like it's fair to set the criteria there.

@mint @BobSnodgrass Good points all around, having thought more about this I think that my proposed scenario before was definitely too strict. I've done my best to not change my idea of what would resolve this market, but I can definitely see how it seems like moving goalposts when we have so many instances of me saying "oh that seems really close" in the comments.

New proposed bright lines based on your suggestions:

Examples of sufficient-but-not-necessary conditions for this market to resolve to "invasion":

A) The headline (the large-font text) of any non-opinion article featured on the NYT Israel-Hamas Page or the WSJ Middle-East Page clearly describes Israel's actions in Rafah with the word "invasion", and is not quoting someone else. This resolves YES regardless of if the sub-headline (the smaller font text) uses another word instead of invasion.

B) The headline of any such article does not use the word invasion, but the sub-headline does call Israel's actions an invasion and the article itself emphasizes that choice, using the word "invasion" more than any of the other terms they have used as a substitute.

C) Regardless of use of the word "invasion", the NYT or the WSJ unambiguously report in more than one article that the conflict has now escalated into the long-anticipated "full-scale" military action. This reporting must make it clear that new events are a major escalation from what has previously been often called as a "limited operation".

@Joshua fair to me! Thanks