I just ran into this market and hesitate to comment on something that perhaps should be left buried, but for what it's worth, I'd support overturning a 'No' resolution.

If the linked market resolves to YES, what does this resolve to? N/A?

@pa yes

@JosephNoonan Yes as in, "Yes it resolves to N/A", not "It resolves to YES."

Allowing arbitrary vexatious tests of the system is not useful

There is nothing wrong with just doing the obvious right thing and ignoring or banning these pomo attempts to challenge truth blah blah blah

@StrayClimb if you're not curious on this question there's plenty of other markets you could participate in.

@StrayClimb The question I'm exploring is tension between literal meaning and intent. It's neither arbitrary nor vexatious. One thing I'm not particularly interested in countenancing is barracks lawyers trying to browbeat question makers into subsuming their plain intent in favor of a literalist interpretation. I will not be resolving the April Fools Market N/A.

Place your bet or don't, I don't care, but don't complain about the way the question is structured or what I'm trying to test.

I'm surprised people think there's a strong rule against incorrect resolutions. I see incorrect resolutions on this site regularly, and the large majority of them go uncorrected. Almost all are due to honest mistakes or miscommunications. As a trader, I always factor in this possibility. I was surprised to see how high these markets were trading given the obvious potential for "unexpected" resolution.

@NickAllen I don’t think you’re truly interested in “exploring” a question in an open-minded and truth-seeking way. If you were, then you wouldn’t accuse people who are pushing back against your approach of being “barracks lawyers” who are trying to “browbeat” you into anything.

I am staking out my view that the stated way that you have handled or are supposedly intending to handle the market is dishonest, corrosive to the platform, unprincipled, and supported by pretty poor arguments.

@NickAllen You can explore interesting interpretative questions without intentionally making misleading markets. Instead of demanding that people either bow to your undisclosed subjective intent contrary to the plain language of the market or go elsewhere, your time and reputational stake would have been better spent thinking about how to “explore” this question in a way that does not involve making flatly misleading markets.

The reason why I built the April Fools market is to help nail down what it means to be fraudulent in a market. There's a largely unexplored grey area in between "the letter of what the post says, taken literally" and "whatever the creator wanted".

For example, we have this market: https://manifold.markets/Luca3f84/will-kanye-wests-next-album-feature?r=Tmlja0FsbGVu .

Will Kanye West's next album feature anti-semetic content?

40% chance. His upcomming album is rumored to have "controversial but not antisemetic", lyrics about Jewish people

Now a literalist might pose the question, as I did in the comments, about why we might suspect Kanye West of coming out opposed to the Semetic languages of SW Asia and the Middle East, and believe that the market is incorrectly misinterpreting the question to mean "anti-semitic" and that there's a tradeable edge there. However I suspect that if I traded that edge as much as it deserved I'd be in for a rude awakening when it gets resolved technically-incorrectly based on whether Kanye mentions Jews in an unflattering way.

It would be hard to argue that presumed literalist mis-resolution would be 'fraudulent'. Why is that? Probably because the intent to deceive, to steal, isn't present. The author just used the wrong word; honest mistake, and anyone looking at it can tell what their intent is. The intent doesn't match up with the wording, but the way it should be interpreted is clear.

Another market worth considering is last year's big market @PhatFree ran, https://manifold.markets/PhatFree/will-texas-have-blackouts-this-wint?r=Tmlja0FsbGVu. In that case a large group of the participants interpreted the market as being about another major winter storm-associated blackout a-la 2020, and another large group interpreted it as being about any medium-sized blackout, based again on a mismatch between the intent and the wording. @PhatFree took the lame way out and resolved it N/A, and we all learned a little bit about how hard it is to clarify "I know it when I see it" in a culture war-adjacent area (which Texas's thriving apparently is).

Enter the April Fools Market. I wanted to create a scissor that neatly pointed out the tension in both these questions: there is a clear intent to resolve the market "no" (as based on the fact that I chose 1 April as the resolution date, and emphasized the fact heavily in the comments, and made follow-on markets like this one), as compared to clear language demanding the market be resolved "yes".

Let's see how it plays out.

@NickAllen Paired food for thought: which way would constitute a 'misresolution'? The intent to resolve the market 'no' is very, very clear.

@NickAllen I disagree. It's implied with a link to april fool's. That is a far far cry from "very, very clear"

Also, you keep saying you haven't decided how to resolve. So obviously it isn't clear.

@NickAllen The intent is clear TO YOU, because you have unique access to your mental state. The intent was obviously not clear to many people, who generally operate (and should be able to operate) under the assumption that clear, unambiguous, and unqualified statements about how markets will be resolved will be honored at all times. If the clearly stated rules for resolving the market conflict with your own mental state, then the former should triumph. Only when there is reasonable ambiguity is resorting to subjective intent even possibly appropriate.

@NickAllen The Kanye example is not a good one. The common meaning of anti-semitism is hatred/unfairness towards Jewish people. The etymology not matching with common usage does not create any ambiguity.

@NickAllen People bet before you posted about AFD in the comments. Also, the market moved like 20% after you posted that. So:

1. People were not on-notice to the possibility that you would use the market as an AFD prank before you posted the comment, and it is unfair to such people to use the comments as evidence of your clear intent.

2. The fact that the market moved means that people were significantly updating based on that information, so it was unclear before that.

Also:

1. Comments should not be able to contradict clear and unambiguous resolution criteria in the title or description.

2. Lots of markets, including ones with much more ambiguity than this, will/have resolve(d) on April 1. Certainly your position is not that any resolution of those markets is fair game?

@Radicalia "semEtic" =/= "semItic".

@Radicalia Maybe the design wasn't perfect, I'm playing with an idea. Posting the question and clarifying further a day later when the resolution is still 8 months in the future isn't a foul IMHO. If anyone is really hurt about the update on that clarification they can pm me and I'll consider refunding whatever you lost in that moment.

As evidence that this clarification wasn't out of left field, however, see this comment from before my clarification. https://manifold.markets/NickAllen/this-market-will-resolve-yes-on-apr?r=Tmlja0FsbGVu#7kDfCiUxCYgcBJQ549DI

This market will resolve yes on April 1, 2024.

83% chance. I won't bet in it.

Admittedly there was a certain amount of reading between the lines required that first day, but people were doing that reading.

If the tension between literal meaning and intent isn't interesting to you (or anyone else reading this) feel free to not participate in this question. There's plenty of other "this will resolve X on Y" fodder out there.

@NickAllen You have moved the goalposts incredibly far. You started by saying that there was a “very very clear intent” to resolve NO, but now are saying that it “wasn't out of left field” and required “reading between the lines.”

The actual situation is obviously this: the publicly readable text to your question implies a clear and unambiguously correct answer. Days after people had invested on the basis of that clearly correct answer, you have floated the possibility of resolving the question incorrectly on the basis of your supposed past “intent,” which is obviously directly contrary to what was earlier written, and is at best a possibility worth entertaining only if you go around assuming that market-makers will flat-out lie about how they are going to resolve markets for their own amusement or experimentation. Incentivizing people to act like this or even tolerating this may be fun for you, which is fine since this is a game after all. But it degrades the utility of the platform and increases monitoring and transaction costs for all players. It is antisocial and unproductive to tell obvious lies, and then tell people to go elsewhere when they push back against losing points due to your lies.

Maybe the biggest possible prank is tricking the No holders into thinking that they can profit from incorrect resolutions

@Radicalia Well, that's what this question here aims to establish.

From the Community Guidelines:

Users don’t maliciously take advantage of ambiguity, loopholes, and technicalities, at the cost of others. This is especially true if they are the market creator.

Users who post this type of content may be banned from posting content. They may also have their mana balance partially or fully reduced if related to fraud..

• Markets designed to defraud users.

  • This includes markets that say in the title or description that they will resolve inaccurately

We expect market creators to decide on the correct resolution and resolve their markets accordingly.

• Once resolution criteria are met users are expected to resolve their market promptly.

• Market creators typically have the final say on what the resolution is, even if it is inaccurate.

  • If markets are extremely misleading, we reserve the right to re-resolve N/A

  • However, be warned you may be tagged with a warning next to your name: “This creator has a track record of resolving their markets incorrectly.”

@Radicalia I think the "even if inaccurate" bit is no longer true, and they just haven't changed it. I believe that's been in there from a long time, since back before there was a policy of re-resolving markets. It wasn't until a few months ago that they actually started re-resolving misresolved markets. Before that, even scam resolutions were allowed to fly.

@Radicalia So it looks like in addition to not betting in the market, I need to also donate any traffic beyond the costs of setting up the market. I'll do that. Trying to create a pure of a intent/wording schism as possible here, so my fake money benefit can't be part of the consideration.