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"Aging like milk" is too mild a descriptor for how wrong this is.

Anyone who thinks the answer is "no" must logically think the Strait of Hormuz is open since that's an official position.

@RobMyers While there is some amount of creator discretion allowed, along with various kinds of clarifications, the market description here has set a very high bar which is extremely specific about requiring a direct medical diagnosis AND that the credible evidence is available by the end of 2025.

Since that combination of things has not been shown, I'm going to re-resolve this market No. There has already been over 3 months of extra time for anyone to show up with the evidence so it would be a little silly to leave it as unresolved pending more info. If you find further evidence in the future that we have somehow missed, please bring it to the market.

@Eliza Then this whole exercise was pointless if there was no way to ever resolve it as "Yes." Perhaps that's my initial fault, but it was approved and run so I wash my hands of responsibility as I resolved in good faith according to freely available and testable facts.

There's a saying, "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining," which is what I say the to this ruling.

It should never have been approved or run if there was no way for it to ever resolve to other than No. If we're only going to stick with the official answer of a known pathological liar it's not a fair question, nor one that should have allowed people to bet their imaginary money on it. The criteria were whipped up by your own AI which incorrectly assumed GOOD FAITH on the part of all involved which is a fool's errand when it comes to this White House.

Therefore I propose those who bet Yes deserve their pretend money back and no one should be able to "profit" from this. The idea that the facts really support the idea of No here is absurd, and is an example of rubber-stamping a known source of disinformation.

As it stands this has been more a test of this website and its team's ability to discern facts from propaganda, which it clearly failed.

If this site has any integrity at all, it will either back my fair and good faith resolution or void the whole thing. Resolving "No" is an act of simply bowing to political and social pressure amongst the mods and in no way an earnest attempt to seek truth.

If you will not resolve Yes, I say Void this.

@RobMyers I don't know what you mean by "approved" - nobody approves questions on this site.

There absolutely was a way this could resolve yes - if the listed criteria happened. For example Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years after his presidency and disclosed it publicly. I think everyone agrees it was possible but extraordinary unlikely to happen, and the prices reflected that.

@jack The correct answer to this question is definitely not "No." Therefore this market is null and void, IMO. And my opinion is all you can be messaging about, because my actual decision has been dubbed unworthy and dismissed, and therefore this should not award anything to anyone.

@RobMyers Thank you for sharing your perspective on the process of first establishing and later resolving this market. I definitely see what you are saying -- you feel like you've been trapped into resolving opposite to the way you would resolve the question you originally dreamed up.

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To help you understand why so many people see it differently, I'll try to reframe it from the perspective of what site users are seeing and betting on.

Here is how traders would have approached this market:

• The catchy main question/market title: You have come up with a very interesting way to phrase your question and I'm sure many of your traders found it enticing enough to click in. But the title alone is not specific enough to resolve a market.

• The market description: Traders who originally read the short question/title will carefully review the market description to find out exactly what criteria must be met to resolve. This is the critical point of definition and I can imagine versions of the same question title, but with wildly different criteria requirements. You, the market creator, differentiate your market from others in this place. Many other people probably had the same question as you, but your market criteria have completely controlled all betting activity on this market.

• The trading: We can't just say "Look, the market thought it was 3% so it's definitely not Yes" -- that's too simplistic. But the low market price does imply at least something about how people have understood your question. I'm quite confident in Manifold's userbase to discern the full situation and we've heard from the largest Yes holder already admitting that the criteria do set a high bar.

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Some additional points about your understanding of how the site works, that could help you going forward:

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there was no way to ever resolve it as "Yes."

The market as written absolutely could have resolved Yes, but the events required did not happen.

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Perhaps that's my initial fault

You may have failed to clearly convey the question you actually wanted to ask, but the market you did run was answering a real question and did a fine job of it.

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It should never have been approved or run

There's no approval, you are in control of what markets you want to run and how you want to run them. You wrote the market title and description and published it. The only part where this breaks down is you're not allowed to resolve it in a way that is directly against the criteria as written.

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If we're only going to stick with the official answer of a known pathological liar it's not a fair question

I'm not really following you here, your market criteria are extremely explicit about this, mentioning the high bar several times:

• official medical diagnosis

• public disclosure of medical records

• public statement from Donald Trump

• diagnosing dementia requires comprehensive medical evaluation

• public observations alone are insufficient

• Goldwater Rule

If you had instead written "If a medical profession goes on the record saying he probably has dementia", then this could have resolved Yes! But it says "official medical diagnosis" instead and rules out casual observation.

If you had no criteria at all or a very short one, this very likely could have resolved Yes also. But the key piece here is that traders absolutely did bet based on the criteria as written. We can't just rewrite the question's rules after they already bet.

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The criteria were whipped up by your own AI

If you've offloaded the market criteria to the AI then you still have to abide by it. You could have written it yourself instead and then it probably would have matched your own interpretation.

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That said, I think you kinda got trapped by it and we're supposed to tell the site operators when the AI feature has unsatisfactory results:

@ian the AI has left the user dissatisfied. You need to do a better job of communicating to market creators that they don't need to and shouldn't necessarily trust this notoriously annoying "feature" that seems to only produce nonsense much of the time. It should be explicitly stated that the AI criteria can be modified or overwritten by the market creator and they don't have to go with whatever it comes up with.

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If you will not resolve Yes, I say Void this.

The guidelines about this type of request are still very unclear despite years of the same thing coming up. There is a contingent who would reject this request strongly and another contingent willing to hear you out. The market did predict a thing, even if it didn't match what you were thinking about.

@Eliza i will push some changes to the ai description generator that will be helpful for this case!

@ian Just a question of whether right now you'd consider the Strait of Hormuz as open, as the White House says, or closed, as Iran says. Which is the "official" answer here?

@RobMyers no idea! would depend on the specifics of the question criteria, that hopefully would've been worked out before it was in the superposition it's in now.

@ian My point is, same thing with his dementia. You need a "resolved to superpositioned" at least.

@RobMyers but this question has seemingly clear resolution criteria that weren't met:

This market will resolve to "Yes" if, by the end of 2025, there is credible evidence indicating that Donald Trump is suffering from dementia. Such evidence may include:

• An official medical diagnosis of dementia made by a licensed healthcare professional.

• Public disclosure of medical records confirming a dementia diagnosis.

• A public statement from Donald Trump or his official representatives acknowledging a dementia diagnosis.

If no such evidence is available by December 31, 2025, the market will resolve to "No."

@ian
> An official medical diagnosis of dementia made by a licensed healthcare professional.

And his licensed healthcare professional psychologist niece who has spent years studying him is being thrown out because she disagrees with him. That is what I still don't get, but I know when I'm talking to a wall.

But to be clear, I DID NOT ASK "will trump admit to having dementia." Mugg's game, fool's errand. I asked "DOES HE HAVE IT FROM AN OBJECTIVE VIEWPOINT."

@RobMyers hmmm i don't really think i'll have a different opinion to offer than the moderators. i might be open to sth like you put up a 10k at 90% bet that i'll disagree with the mods if you want me to spend 15-30 mins looking into this.

@ian NVM, I've lost interest in being proven right and burned out my hope for restitution cuz this is a casino after all and gambling bores me. Have a good evening.

@RobMyers opus think this is clearly not a diagnosis: https://claude.ai/share/a81dbc1b-3aae-4b30-baa1-077df4cbdae3

@RobMyers

what she's offering is closer to personal speculation informed by her professional background and family history — not a clinical diagnosis. A real dementia diagnosis requires formal neuropsychological testing, brain imaging, medical history review, and ruling out other causes. She has acknowledged this distinction herself, framing her observations as concerns rather than a definitive diagnosis.

I think the word official in "An official medical diagnosis of dementia made by a licensed healthcare professional." makes this tricky.

I'm the largest yes holder I think, but even I think we will never get an official diagnosis, even if I think he has it now. Which I do. I could understand that this is unresolved again. But personally I think he has dementia ;)

@TheWabiSabi I can certainly understand your position and that of Rob as the creator, but it is clear to me that there is a consensus among several moderators that all seem to agree no evidence meeting the high bar of the market description has been located.

His niece, a licensed psychologist with intimate family knowledge and hundreds of hours being in his presence, has said that he's currently suffering from dementia.

Trump, 79, Has Dementia Just Like His Dad: Trump’s Niece

@RobMyers Would you be willing to link us to a source for this?

@Quroe Trump, 79, Has Dementia Just Like His Dad: Trump’s Niece

@RobMyers Us traders were operating on the published resolution criteria for this market. Do you believe this meets the criteria stated?

Resolution criteria:

This market will resolve to "Yes" if, by the end of 2025, there is credible evidence indicating that Donald Trump is suffering from dementia. Such evidence may include:

• An official medical diagnosis of dementia made by a licensed healthcare professional.

• Public disclosure of medical records confirming a dementia diagnosis.

• A public statement from Donald Trump or his official representatives acknowledging a dementia diagnosis.

If no such evidence is available by December 31, 2025, the market will resolve to "No."

@Quroe An official medical diagnosis of dementia made by a licensed healthcare professional.

If the real question you're asking is "Does Mary Trump count?" I think yes.

If that's up for debate though, I'm out.

Also the interview and article are from 2025. So it was in on time.

@RobMyers This is an official diagnosis?

@Quroe Does Mary Trump count? A diagnosis is something a medical professional can just say out loud.

@RobMyers I would argue no. This is not an official diagnosis because she is not his treating physician.

@Quroe I would argue you're picking your own definition of "official."

"relating to an authority or public body and its duties, actions, and responsibilities"

She is the Official in this capacity, operating with full knowledge of his range of symptoms, family history and lifestyle, regardless of his consent. While the symptoms have been on full display for the public, she has seen far more in private. She doesn't need to give him a battery of tests or even tell him she's observing him or get his consent, she just has to observe.

If my doctor looks at my sister's broken leg and gets literally all the same information as her treating physician and says "that's a broken leg alright" then an Official, in their Official capacity, while still being My Doctor, has made a diagnosis. Whether they are the ones who treat her is irrelevant. Whether other doctors even agree is irrelevant, a diagnosis has been made by an official. And yes, I think she will stand by this.

If what you're asking for is "trump's own physician publicly confirm this" then this entire exercise is meaningless and was never worthy of having been approved. You may as well ask if Trump will admit to a crime.

Ah, I think you believe I'm debating what the words "official" or "healthcare professional" mean here. I am debating over the word "diagnosis".

Pulling from the market description...

Considerations:

• The Goldwater Rule prohibits mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures without direct examination and consent, limiting the availability of professional assessments.

I do not believe this counts as a diagnosis. Diagnosis carries legal weight and is a much easier position for the NO holders to defend.

@Quroe "limiting the availability of professional assessments."

Limiting, but I note not eliminating. She is literally the best qualified professional on the planet with all the access needed, and who has far more than enough evidence before her to to make her diagnosis. If she is not that rare exception to the Goldwater Rule, then there are none.

In this case I submit that she has been able to directly examine the patient because this kind of diagnosis is one of observation. And because she was there as a family member and observing over the course of years, consent is irrelevant.

If however one was to insist on only accepting answers from the pathological liar rather than the trust-proven qualified professional who has indeed made her examination and released her official diagnosis, they would not be seeking truth here, they'd be seeking to protect something else.

@mods I'd like to hear your thoughts, but honestly if we are to dismiss Mary Trump's diagnosis then this whole exercise is moot. We also must not ignore that the president and his team's utter lack of trustworthiness is a key factor here.

The terms also just say "a licensed healthcare professional." It does not say "his personal physician."

@RobMyers Mary Trump, Harry Segal, Lance Dodes and many others have said Trump has dementia, before your market was created; none of them made an official diagnosis because they would need to have direct access to the patient or consent. I also think he may have dementia or Alzheimer’s, but the market hinges on the diagnosis being oficial, which was highly improbable, hence the price trend.

https://as.cornell.edu/news/trumps-abrupt-decision-play-dj-sign-accelerating-cognitive-decline-says-cornell-expert

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-mind-faltering-top-psychologist-harry-segal-18

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-dementia-evidence-overwhelming-top-psychiatrist-1881247

No clinician-patient relationship was established between Mary and Donald Trump. Therefore, her personal opinion is not a medical diagnosis, regardless of whether or not she is licensed.

@RobMyers Would you be willing to take this source into consideration?

While not offering a formal diagnosis, her [Mary Trump's] comments have framed the president's increasingly erratic public missteps in a more alarming light.

@LietKynes I'll note that all those others, "Harry Segal, Lance Dodes and many others" were diagnosing from a distance, with no access to the patient which is specifically and only what the Goldwater Rule was designed to prevent. Mary Trump is not a stranger with no personal interaction or knowledge, nor is she merely an untrained family member uneducated in this topic, she is simply not being paid by said patient. That is the only distinction.

If that is a sticking point it tells me you're not following logic, you're sticking to rules for the sake of rules and (I suspect) to win. But I'm sure she would swear to it under oath, I'm sure she's qualified, I'm sure she has far more than enough data, and I'm sure there's are no rational reasons to dismiss her diagnosis as authentic and as official as "an official diagnosis of dementia" can possibly be.

@RobMyers Respectfully, this is also part of your market description. Yes, I am sticking to the rules. You're right!

It's important to note that diagnosing dementia requires comprehensive medical evaluation, and public observations alone are insufficient for a definitive diagnosis.

@Quroe If that's the case, then the premise of an official diagnosis from a licensed professional was never a possibility. Mental patients are often diagnosed by court-appointed psychologists who get far less access, insight and experience with a patient than she has had.

@RobMyers Now we're speaking the same language! Yes! The probability was indeed low, given the rules set forth in the market description.

@RobMyers what makes you think Mary Trump has or had access to his uncle? She’s been a vocal critic for many years.

The amount of insight is not relevant. The resolution criteria state "official medical diagnosis of dementia made by a licensed healthcare professional". If hypothetically a doctor made an official diagnosis during a 15-minute checkup, that counts, whereas an unofficial analysis by someone with close access to Trump for years does not count (again, hypothetically)

Did Trump "consent" (per the Goldwater rule) to a diagnosis from Mary Trump? If not, then by my understanding of the text laid out in the market rules, Mary Trump cannot officially diagnose him - anything she says would by definition be unofficial if there was not consent.

I looked up the exact text of the Goldwater rule

> On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.

I think it's clear that an "official diagnosis" therefore requires that the doctor "has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement."

@mods I'd like to hear your thoughts, but honestly if we are to dismiss Mary Trump's diagnosis then this whole exercise is moot. We also must not ignore that the president and his team's utter lack of trustworthiness is a key factor here.

It's not moot, the question has always been about meeting a very high bar. If you wanted to ask a different question, you could have.