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Best market on site tbh

@Rucker 🙏

Truly a shame this market even existed and was featured in the NYTimes piece. Even more disappointing that it was resolved without any proof. Manifold will never be a serious prediction market site now, so Manifold.dating is probably a good idea, but will drive the more serious users to find somewhere else to forecast serious things.

@BTE what kind of proof should we have asked for 😂

@Joshua All the more reason this market should never existed. I am sure it got lots of laughs, unfortunately most of those laughs were probably at Manifold, not with Manifold. Normally I would say this is not a big deal,and even laugh along, but I have had several friends ask me if “that orgy site” is the thing I have been telling them about and it’s embarrassing. Certainly it caps Manifold’s potential growth.

@Joshua Curious, do you think Manifold is worth $40mm today? Because my understanding is that is how they value themselves.

@BTE 🤨 huh, I assumed your comments were sarcastic. but I'll take em at face value and address some of the concerns, bc no doubt someone else holds the concerns seriously.

as you know, unlike other prediction sites, Manifold allows users to guide their experience here. they write the questions and resolve them on their own. that means we get everything from serious real world issues to personal goals and politically divisive topics to games and competitions. there's deeper value in that for users.

this question in particular had the greater part of a month for traders to suggest ways of giving proof better than "Pat was told privately by multiple credible sources". no one did suggest better criteria, maybe because anyone trading here assumed I would resolve fairly given my track record, maybe because none of us could reasonably expect me to be given pics as proof to be posted publicly, and probably both. and like many things that went down at an in person event, there's just stuff that "if you weren't there, you missed it".

this question was divisive. though it synergized with a known sex researcher attending the conference, in private it got me a bunch of flak from staff and some minority of users, and caused a whole shift in the regulation of certain types of markets. but that's the cost of having a site with a userbase that is slowly becoming multicultural; there are different norms among different people. for me, a sex-positive person attending a conference in SF that happened to be going down at the same time as kink week and the Folsom Street Fair, this was not even close to an out-of-bounds question. not only was it not in jest, I believed it was something worth measuring and predicting (and I'm glad it did exist, since even if sex is an icky topic for others ingrained with an unfortunate worldview built on shame, those of us who cared could still participate in the predicting). the reactions to this market told and continue to tell me whether this is a community worth being a part of, a community where I can consistently disagree but still find a place for myself.

and when it came to resolution, the reality is that there were a large amount of people who knew this went down; the orgy went on for hours. to those hanging out by the firepit at the conference that evening, this resolution was not only not a surprise but entirely expected. to resolve otherwise would have been a stark misresolution.

@Stralor Yeah also sex positive people have confidentiality norms, so market resolution is definitely going to be fall short of a lot of transparency ideals.

This is a major bottleneck for manifold.love that I made sure James and the manisquad are aware of, and also a bottleneck for many Hot And Unchristian usecases I've thought of.

@BTE I think having NSFW questions being hidden by default is good, but I like that manifold has a lean free speech angle here.

@Stralor I very much appreciate this explanation. I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating such questions and having fun with Manifold. I have lots of questions that are basically just jokes like /BTE/will-i-name-my-first-child-buttocks or /BTE/does-elon-musk-have-a-micropenis and /BTE/is-hakeem-jeffries-a-robot . I appreciate you and I think it’s fantastic to be sex positive. I still wish Kevin Roose hadn’t seen it and the NYTimes article had been more about the value of prediction markets rather than the sex positive vibes at manifest.

@BTE Honestly I thought that article was really fair. It is what we are like.

@NathanpmYoung It wasn’t unfair. But it also wasn’t a huge win. It was ‘meh’.

@BTE I don't buy this either. I think most publicity is good at this stage.

@NathanpmYoung I believe we removed the hiding NSFW by default recently. Mostly because special cases are bad. imo we should have a broad solution for triggers / content blocks that empowers users to not see what really peeves them them whether that's sex, gay culture, gambling, or fiction spoilers. but that's something to tackle a bit later.

@BTE you have my word that the orgy did actually occur and the participants knew of this market beforehand. though I will not reveal how I know this

@Sinclair I was actually being sarcastic when I made the comment about no proof. @Stralor

@BTE aha! I thought so 😄

@Sinclair If anything I am just sad I missed it. This is my post event FOMO or whatever LOL.

Resolved YES without proof? Something fucky going on here. Feel scammed.

@Sanargama Something fucky indeed must’ve happened

We should donate any referrals that come via the article to charity on the NYTs behalf 😛

Everyone send some mana to @KevinRoose as a thank you 😅

@NathanpmYoung ;-;