Interesting Markets Grants: I Pay You to Make a Market of Your Choice --> Submit Here
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Please submit ideas for interesting markets and I will pay you to create, no strings attached (other than the markets must actually be created by the party being paid).

For the types of market topics that I have created, which might or might not be ones that appeal to me to fund, check out here:

https://manifold.markets/PatrickDelaney?tab=questions

Of course any market topic might be appealing to me to fund.

That being said, I am going to be much more likely to fund markets that are:

  • Verifiable by some third-party source and as unambiguous as possible. For example, if the topic is AI-related, what is the numeric, empirical benchmark being used, who publishes it, where can we follow it, and what is the threshold in order for the market to resolve? Laying all of these out unambigiously ahead of time in your idea description will help.

  • New, interesting ideas, not trying to be intellectually edgy, just trying to look into an interesting area, and if you're not confident that the market would be a good one to create because it might not be popular, go ahead and submit it and I'll fund it and then you don't have to worry about whether you're going to get an ROI.

  • Ideas that appeal to you personally and that you're likely to pay attention to on a regular basis and run well.

  • Lower net worth Manna individuals encouraged to apply. If you're already doing well in terms of Manna, I'm less likely to fund you. However you could post your idea her and say that you want to gift it to someone, and then a lower net worth individual could choose to create it and I will award them.

  • YES/NO, Multiple Choice, markets will take precident over more expensive markets to run, but this does not preclude other types of markets from being funded by any means.

There is no obligation, no strings attached.

  • If anyone chooses to pay me Manna to help fund this effort, I can tack on more.

  • If anyone wants to pay me Manna as a thanks after the fact or down the road, that's great, thank you.

  • If anyone wants to link back to this market from their description to show how it was sponsored, great, that might help others create additional markets as well, but no obligation to do so.

  • Please specify if you do send Manna where it should go, if you want it reinvested into this market.

Please link your created markets within the comment threads after you have created them.

Get Ṁ200 play money
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+Ṁ50

Coming back for a double-dip.

"Will a TinyBox ship in 2023?"

George Hotz recently launched tiny corp. Their product will be the tinybox, a $15k machine capable of "[running] 65B FP16 LLaMA out of the box". Based on WayBack Machine snapshots, the timeline for shipping the tinybox is 2-6 months, starting May 25 2023.

This question probes the progress of tiny corp, the tinybox, and the tinygrad library.

+Ṁ50

Will Apple resume advertising on X before July 1st, 2024?

This will be verified by credible media reports or multiple credible users reporting they see ads for Apple on X.

+Ṁ50

The question: What city/ will host the 2030 Olympic Winter Games? This will be decided on July 23, 2024, market closing slightly beforehand. Free response format. Userbase would probably enjoy Olympic speculation given politics and sports markets are popular, but niche hasn't been filled.

+Ṁ50

"How many former colonies will England play in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup?"

In the knockout round, England has the opportunity to play, Nigeria, Jamaica, Australia, and the United States. (They played no former colonies in the group stage.)

The question will have four possible choices: 1, 2, 3, and 4. The question will require M100 in funding. This list on Wikipedia will be used to determine which countries count as "former colonies".

+Ṁ50

The question: Will there be a new US State by 2055? Needs to be an existing state in 2055 that is not one of the current 50 states. There do not have to be 51+ states, just one we don't have today.

If funded, I intend to make a question that follows up on this angle about the ongoing and implied "what about other possible LK-99-likes?" questions, so that people can arbitrage it properly (and also draw the appropriate mental connections as to "wait, what is LK-99 exactly?" and thus further perfect the distributed reasoning about things). I may focus on the "copper or gold?" detail recently discussed by Lai et alia in https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.16040.pdf

Whoops, meant to post this in Conflux's thread instead, was going to post something else here.

This is an awesome grants program, thanks Patrick for creating it! I'm running my own, with fairly similar criteria (I didn't actually realize this program existed when I started mine...): differences are

  • no guideline about a third-party source (I just require general clarity)

  • I also offer optionally to make the market myself crediting you (if you feel the market would receive more attention/legitimacy this way)

  • limited to users with net worth <M$2000 (but this is negotiable)

Anyway, if you think your market is a better fit for my grant program than Patrick's, I'll drop the link to mine:

Will a large language model be trained by Dec 31 2024 for the following task: parse history books or similar material to identify potential natural experiments. By natural experiments I mean configurations of the kind leveraged by econometrics to determine causal relations between variables, using techniques such as diff in diff, regression discontinuity, etc.

Will resolve based on the appearance of a convincing account of training either on arxiv, hal, or ideas.

The question: Will there be at least 12 "Dark Brandon" themed items on the Joe Biden campaign store by the end of 2023? Decided by how many items are in the "Dark" section of the store (https://shop.joebiden.com/dark/)

An idea that popped into my head when reading the discussions of UK media landscape. Couldn't find a market on Manifold so I made one. Thank you for your consideration!

https://manifold.markets/SarkanyVar/will-the-bbc-licence-fee-be-axed-by

Will the BBC licence fee be axed by the end of 2028?
50% chance. The BBC license fee is the annual payment required in the UK to legally watch live broadcast television and access BBC iPlayer services. It currently costs £159 per year for a color TV license. The license fee system has been in place since 1923, originally as a radio licence, as a way to fund the broadcaster. In January 2022, the culture secretary of the UK, Nadine Dorries, announced plans to freeze the license fee for the next two years. She also said she wants to find a new funding model for the BBC after the current license fee funding deal ends following the expiration of the current Royal Charter on 31 December 2027, as she aims to eventually scrap the license fee altogether. Dorries has been a vocal critic of the BBC, but had since resigned from the government following the end of the Johnson ministry. The UK's next general election is currently scheduled to take place sometime in 2024 to early 2025. The results of this election could have a significant impact on whether the plan to scrap the license fee ultimately comes to fruition. If the Conservative party retains power, it's more likely they will follow through with finding a new BBC funding model to replace the license fee. However, if Labour wins the election, they may reverse course on license fee reform. Market Resolution Criteria: YES - The BBC licence fee is formally abolished at any point before the end of 2028. This means at any point before the closing time of the market, the annual, quarterly or monthly licence fee is abolished. This includes the scenario in which the licence fee is only abolished for the last month of 2028. It also includes the scenario in which the licence fee is briefly fully abolished (so that there is at least a month of non-payment) but later reinstated (e.g. following a change in government), as long as it happens before the closing of the market. Any temporary freezing or deferment of payment (defined by the government as such) does not count as abolishment for the purpose of market resolution. Replacement of funding by an alternative payment model (e.g. premium or subscription models) counts as abolishment, as long as the licence fee is completely abolished (no fee is tied automatically to legally watch live on any channel, TV service or streaming service, or use BBC iPlayer). NO - The BBC licence fee is not abolished by the end of 2028. This includes the scenario in which the abolishment is announced but will only be formally implemented after 2028, i.e. the British public still need to pay the licence fee through 2028. N/A - Edge cases, such as the complete abolishment of BBC as a media organisation and the closure of the public broadcaster. A comparable scenario would be the closure of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and its replacement by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) . References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60014514 https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/current-affairs/bbc-licence-fee-abolished/ [link preview]