What even is the argument in favour of the limit?

@TheAllMemeingEye There was a discussion on the Discord a few days ago about this, the main argument by people in favor was that it stops new and overconfident users from making bad bets

I feel like Manifold users make bad overconfident bets anyway, but that was the argument I saw most often

@evan thanks for explaining 👍

Honestly if that's the case maybe it should only apply to new users then lol, and automatically deactivate once enough time has passed or enough mana earned

Hey @4fa and @MingCat , I noticed you both voted no, is what Evan says the reason? Would you both be ok with my suggestion for it to eventually deactivate?

@TheAllMemeingEye I also feel like encouraging people to make ridiculously risky bets is generally not a good idea. Even if someone really knows what they're doing, they can always make a mistake or the market creator might resolve strangely (just not strangely enough to involve a mod). I think the limit lops off the worst possible outcomes on Manifold while also focusing the site just a bit more on actual prediction, rather than milking the last little bit of value from markets.

That said, I'm unsure how biased I am. Maybe in a world without the limit I would argue against its inclusion.

@TheAllMemeingEye Basically what @MingCat wrote.

@MingCat don't you sometimes find yourself frustrated that there's a market for a popular and interesting but extremely unlikely event, with an extremely reputable market creator, such that the true probability might be around 0.01-0.05%, yet the bet limits make it impossible for the market to go below 1%? In such cases, would-be NO bettors aren't able to bet against it at all because the site won't let them, and would-be YES bettors never get to have the odds go low enough that they are incentivised to bet YES. I feel like that gets in the way of prediction rather than helping it.

@TheAllMemeingEye I haven't had this specific frustration, so I'm likely biased. But Mana is quantized, and many markets like that don't even go down to the 1% limit because there's not a profit incentive. Things work better for the Manifold system all around when the criteria are structured so that the probability doesn't have to dip that low. You could:

• Ask about the probability over many years rather than one

• Ask for a slightly more likely prerequisite of the rare criteria

• Ask it as a conditional market

• Or even do a hacky "this market has a 9/10 chance of resolving N/A if it would resolve NO" to multiply the odds by 10x

@MingCat fair enough, I think I remember it being mentioned elsewhere by the staff that mana actually is decimal but the decimals just aren't displayed, but you still make valid points

@TheAllMemeingEye Yeah, I mean in terms of betting on a 0.01% market, you can't bet 0.1 Mana on YES

@TheAllMemeingEye Yes, there is definitely fractional mana. Selling several positions at what is displayed as 0 mana slowly increases my balance. 😁 Betting fractional amounts requires buying and partially reselling.

@4fa

Betting fractional amounts requires buying and partially reselling.

Particularly useful for markets with so little liquidity that betting 1 mana shifts the odds by 80% lol

@TheAllMemeingEye Oh, I'm silly, I forgot limit orders. Reselling is only required if you want to move the market to a fractional percentage probability.