This question resolves to the time period in which the New York Times unequivocally reports that an Israeli ground invasion into Rafah has begun.
Reports of air strikes, raids, covert operations, etc will not be sufficient for a resolution. In general, ambiguous situations in which the NYT does not use the word "invasion" will not be sufficient to resolve this market.
This market will resolve to the time period in which the qualifying reporting is published, which may not be the same day that the reported events occurred.
If a ground invasion begins on a Sunday but the Times does not report on it until Monday morning, this market resolves to the week containing the Monday the reporting appeared on the Times' website. Op-Eds and similar will not be sufficient for resolution.
Resolution will be based on Eastern Time (UTC -04:00). If there is no invasion reported before June 1st, this market resolves to "Not before June".
Clarification on recent events:
Multiple NYT reporters have started to use the word "invasion" somewhat interchangeably with with the less-controversial terms "offensive", "campaign", "assault", and "operation".
This is a significant development for this market's resolution, but it is also a clear example of equivocation.
From Google/Oxford:
e·quiv·o·ca·tion
noun
The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication.
"I say this without equivocation"
This market requires unequivocal reporting of an invasion, in contrast to reporting which distinguishes the current operation from an invasion or reporting which equivocates on the issue. Please keep this definition of equivocation in mind when deciding how to trade on this market.
Examples of sufficient-but-not-necessary conditions for this market to resolve to "invasion":
The headline (the large-font text) of any non-opinion article featured on the NYT Israel-Hamas 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.
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" many times and more than any of the other terms they have used as a substitute.
Regardless of use of the word "invasion", the NYT unambiguously reports 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".
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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.
Alright, after a good deal of reading and discussion with other users in the discord today I think that the NYT's coverage still does not measure up to the standards set in the deflection criteria and in the comment clarifications, particularly the latest comment chain in which I said:
It doesn't have to be every journalist of course, but it should be more than just him and they shouldn't switch back to weasel words in the same article like they're doing right now.
I think they're quite close to committing to it though.
They are still absolutely using weasel words in every article about this, and this is the exact sort of equivocation that the market criteria requires them to dispense with. It's a big deal that they are using the word Invasion regularly now, but the equivocation is a real problem for resolution. I'd like to make this more clear in an update to the market description, so people don't have to read the comments.
My current draft is:
------------
Clarification on recent events:
Multiple NYT reporters have started to use the word "invasion" somewhat interchangeably with with the less-controversial terms "offensive", "campaign", "assault", and "operation".
This is a significant development for this market's resolution, but it is also a clear example of equivocation.
From Google/Oxford:
e·quiv·o·ca·tion
noun
The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication.
"I say this without equivocation"
This market requires unequivocal reporting of an invasion, in contrast to reporting which distinguishes the current operation from an invasion or reporting which equivocates on the issue. Please keep this definition of equivocation in mind when deciding how to trade on this market.
------------
My hope is that this what anyone would conclude from reading the criteria and googling the terms used. Open to suggestions of how the language can be further improved though.
NYTimes has published an article titled Israel Pushes Deeper Into Rafah, Defying International. The article contains this quote in the second paragraph:
As the fighting raged, the International Court of Justice in The Hague said it would respond on Friday to a South African petition to order an immediate halt to the ground assault in Rafah. The court, an arm of the United Nations, has no means of enforcing its orders, but a demand to rein in the invasion would add to the string of diplomatic and legal setbacks for Israel since the war began.
Notably, this use of the word 'invasion' is not by the same author of the previous NYTimes articles that used the word invasion, and that was one of the reasons this did not previously resolve, we wanted to see wider use of the phrase. This article is authored by two different reporters.
Of course, this article uses invasion interchangeably with "assault," "offensive," and "operation." Some may argue that every reference to the operation must be the word "invasion," but this is impractical as assault and offensive are common synonyms for what is happening. The resolution criteria of this market is only that the NYT "unequivocally reports that an Israeli ground invasion into Rafah has begun," and that "air strikes, raids, covert operations, etc will not be sufficient for a resolution. In general, ambiguous situations in which the NYT does not use the word "invasion" will not be sufficient to resolve this market."
Though I have a vested interest in the invasion being reported, I think it's fair to say this case is not an ambiguous situation or limited raid, regardless of whether every use of the word is specifically "invasion." The title of the article is literally "Israel pushes deeper into Rafah."
If anyone believes that the resolution criteria has not been met now that we've had multiple articles using the word "invasion" by different authors, I'd be very interested in hearing your explanation. Can we get a ruling on this latest evidence, @ManifoldPolitics?
@mint First of all, I confess that I have a vested interest in this as well. I recently flipped from betting on the invasion side to betting on the no invasion side, and I'd be pretty annoyed if I end up losing mana both ways.
But I just read the article, and it includes passages like this:
"President Biden and his aides have criticized Israel’s heavy-handed conduct of a war they say could have been waged with less death and destruction, and have told Israel not to mount a major invasion of Rafah without safeguarding the civilians there.
Gauging the scale of casualties and ruin is difficult with combat underway, but Israeli officials have couched the military moves in language that mirrored American demands...
A day earlier, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Israel had not crossed any of the administration’s red lines to that point."
The article doesn't endorse those claims by Israel/the Biden administration, but it also doesn't explicitly contradict them either. So... it's still ambiguous.
Well, the Times' latest article was a big chance for them to call the operation an invasion, and they didn't:
This seems like a decent setback for for an invasion resolution.
@Sodann The other market about Invasion vs ceasefire vs neither this month. A guy posted a strong lead and I came here and saw Stefanie had posted it too and been told it's "quite close" and my position was overpriced, and I figured there was no way it'd make it another week especially if a preponderance could be determined at any moment. Now it looks like I overcorrected, but that's the problem with this market structure, which I'm aware of by now. Oh well. I already wasn't winning Masters this month.
they're finally using the word? there are also reports (not yet in NYT) that they're advancing further into Rafah this evening.
cc @Joshua
@shankypanky This is quite close to what we'd want to see for a resolution, I think. It's especially strong as it's in the first sentence of the article.
However, it's also worth noting that a few paragraphs down in the same article they again switch back to "incursion":
And another thing is that this article and the previously linked articles from May 15th and May 16th that also used the word "invasion" both written by the same journalist, Adam Rasgon. I also found another article by Adam from yesterday that also states that this has been an invasion since the border was seized on May 7th:
So, at this point I think it's clear that Rasgon is making a choice to use the word invasion, and his editors aren't stopping him. But at the same time, he still uses the word "incursion" in the article today and other reporting by the Times continues to avoid the word "invasion"
Article about ICC warrant from today:
Personally I think that "not before June" may be overpriced currently at 69% right now, given that Rasgon does seem to do a lot of their coverage of the conflict.
But I want to note that I'd expect to see more journalists than just Rasgon reporting in the same way before we could say that "The New York Times" is unequivocally reporting that what's happening is an invasion. It doesn't have to be every journalist of course, but it should be more than just him and they shouldn't switch back to weasel words in the same article like they're doing right now.
I think they're quite close to committing to it though.
@Joshua I'm already a big holder of May in this market and in the other one, but I've just went a little bigger. The reality is that Israel is advancing further into Rafah every night. It's possible that NYT will come out with a frontpage article proclaiming in bold "Israel has invaded Rafah", but the reality is sometimes it doesn't happen that way, sometimes these things happen over time. Ukraine is an example where it really did happen all at once. In this case especially, Israel is purposely trying to blur the line and take things slowly. When you have tanks rolling through Rafah and are controlling the border checkout, it's safe to assume an invasion already happened.
But of course, this market is only about what NYTimes will report. My point is that the description doesn't have any preference for invasions that happen all at once or over time, a reported invasion is still a reported invasion. In my view, if NYTimes keeps calling it an invasion, the time period where we can most definitely say their reporting shifted to this should resolve YES, as that's the period that the incursion crossed the line into an invasion according to the NYT.
@Panfilo I'd definitely recommend that traders read this article from a few days ago:
The Times, and the media in general, are doubtlessly choosing their words very carefully.
@hidetzugu It sounds like the Times is ready to declare this additional push a full invasion, if it happens. They're still equivocating in that very article, but we're clearly getting very close to the red line.
@ManifoldPolitics A good test when making a market is trying substituting words. Eg, what is the difference between these two sentences:
It rained today.
It unequivocally rained today.
a curious semantic conflict in the latest NYT article about Rafah (these are from the same piece only paragraphs apart)
this is from an article about the army taking over the border:
will it count for this market?
That is very close, we're definitely in the weeds now. However, I think this still isn't enough yet.
It's a single use of the word with the "limited" modifier and it's describing the events that began on May 6th, and Times has otherwise distinguished those events from the anticipated invasion.
The criteria call for the reporting to be unequivocal, so the Times needs to be consistently describing Israeli actions as an invasion and not describing them as other more ambiguous terms. If they just go back to describing things as "incursions" and "operations" after this article, then things aren't unequivocal yet.
We should watch closely to see what they say next.
@ManifoldPolitics oh so now we went from arguing on synonyms to stating that adjectives dismiss the noun ? Would "temporary invasion" not be considered? What about "illegal invasion"? Would you also consider "BRUTAL invasion" to not be an invasion ?
@hidetzugu The main thing here is that this article is describing events from last week that the NYT have consistently described as not an invasion in all other reporting.
This might represent a change in their editorial position, or it might be one journalist sticking a toe over his editor's line. We need to see more reporting.
@ManifoldPolitics I was unaware "be reported" implied "multiple times" and "every editor in the building agrees". If the NYT bankrups tonight will you claim it was never reported?
@hidetzugu The question is about the Times as an institution making a broad choice to unequivocally use a politically charged term. Right now, it's not clear that they have done this.
And yes, if the Times suddenly stops existing then they can't report anything.
@hidetzugu It's a subjective market. You're betting less on ground truth and more on how joshua is going to resolve.
It's a social dynamics market, really. What biases do you think are in play. This is what you are betting on.
False. It's a subjective market as it relies on personal opinions. Objective would be is 5 > 4. Subjective is whether NYT is using the word 'Invasion' in some underdefined manner. https://manifold.markets/ManifoldPolitics/when-will-a-rafah-ground-invasion-b#7ygypb6fnor
@gpt_news_headlines People don't dispute objective markets, because they are based on verifiable facts with precise boundaries. Election markets are 99% objective. This market is about 10% objective.
@gpt_news_headlines The wording of the question is not that subjective. If the question is when will a specific publication classify an event as a "ground invasion" and, after calling it an incursion for a while, they start using incursion and invasion interchangeably, they have called it an invasion (multiple times by now).
If @ManifoldPolitics wanted to ask "when will the NYT have ground invasion in the title?" (which is what presume is his holdup), he should have worded it like that.
@hidetzugu He didn't define it precisely because it's a subjective market. His plan all along was just to resolve it based on his opinion.
@hidetzugu The subjective word here is "unequivocally" which is basically meaningless in this context.