🏅 Top traders

Will Jon Von Neumann get the #1 seed?
Will Fritz Haber hold off Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Ada Lovelace?
And surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman at #11?
Less than three days left before nominations close, get your trades in!

fritz haber at 76% is waaaaaay overrated but i'm out of mana

@JonathanRay basically did one important thing, and it was trivial, and someone else would have done it within 5 years if he hadn't

Benjamin franklin:
> richest man in the thirteen colonies at one point
> noted womanizer despite being bald and fat

> gained political power through shitposting
> accomplished scientist and inventor in his SPARE TIME despite having little formal education
Was this guy the main character of the simulation at the time?

list benjamin franklin's top 20 most important accomplishments

GPT4:
Benjamin Franklin was a remarkably versatile and influential figure in American history, with achievements spanning from politics and diplomacy to science and literature. Here are 20 of his most important accomplishments:

1. Founding Father of the United States: Franklin was instrumental in the founding of the United States, participating in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

2. Diplomacy: He served as the ambassador to France during the American Revolution, securing vital French support that was crucial for the colonial victory.

3. The Pennsylvania Gazette: Franklin took over the newspaper in 1729, making it one of the most successful publications in the colonies and using it as a platform for public debate and education.

4. Poor Richard's Almanack: Published from 1732 to 1758, this annual pamphlet included weather forecasts, humor, and proverbs like "A penny saved is a penny earned," influencing American culture and morals.

5. Inventions: Franklin invented the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove. He never patented his inventions, believing that they should benefit society freely.

6. Electricity Experiments: He conducted famous experiments with electricity, most notably the kite experiment, proving that lightning is electrical and leading to his invention of the lightning rod.

7. Library Company of Philadelphia: In 1731, Franklin founded the first public lending library in America and the Library Company of Philadelphia, which still operates today.

8. University of Pennsylvania: He was a founding member of the institution that would become the University of Pennsylvania, originally established as an academy in 1740.

9. American Philosophical Society: Franklin founded this society in 1743, promoting scientific and intellectual exchanges that continue to this day.

10. Postmaster General: Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General of the United States in 1775, significantly improving and standardizing the colonial posts.

11. Demographic Studies: His research and writings on population growth and demographics were pioneering and influenced further studies and policies.

12. Oceanography: Franklin charted the Gulf Stream—mapping its path for the first time and studying ocean currents, which improved sea navigation.

13. Philadelphia Fire Department: He organized the Union Fire Company in 1736, one of the first volunteer firefighting companies in America.

14. Abolitionism: Later in life, Franklin became a vocal opponent of slavery and served as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.

15. Political Essays and Pamphlets: His insightful and persuasive writings helped shape public opinion and policy both in America and abroad.

16. Daylight Saving Time: Franklin proposed the concept of changing clocks to save energy by making better use of daylight, although it wasn’t implemented during his lifetime.

17. Bilingual Education: He advocated for bilingual education and supported the establishment of a school that taught courses in both English and German.

18. Public Safety: Franklin pushed for various civic improvements in Philadelphia, including street paving, street lighting, and a more efficient waste management system.

19. The Junto: Franklin founded this mutual improvement society in 1727, where members debated a wide range of scientific and philosophical questions.

20. Vegetarianism and Healthy Living: Early in his life, Franklin adopted a vegetarian diet and later wrote extensively about personal and public health practices.

These contributions reflect Franklin's wide-ranging intellect and his lasting impact on American society and beyond.

Google people who you don’t know! Atomism gang gang!!

At the moment, half of top 10 are mathematicians (von Neumann, Turing, Euler, Gauss, Archimedes). Math is awesome, but it is not half of science and technology. I think people just love math and mathematicians.

Most of those people (except perhaps Gauss) did much more than just pure math.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 "except perhaps Gauss"

AYFKM

@ArmandodiMatteo I'm not as familiar with Gauss. What do you consider to be his main accomplishments outside of pure math?

@TimothyJohnson5c16 even if you count probability theory or numerical integration as "pure math", off the top of my head electromagnetism, and after five seconds of googling astronomy

@TimothyJohnson5c16 one hint is the Gauss is the old name for the unit of magnetic flux. The new one is the Tesla, however in practice the gauss is still used a lot.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Gauss invented least squares. I am mainly counting his methodological contribution to science, not pure math.

If you guys want a bayesian probability guy up here, I think that Laplace and Gibbs are much more important to the development of our understanding than Bayes or Jaynes. Laplace is the one who actually developed the "bayesian perspective" on probability theory, and Gibbs elevated the artform to the next level by understanding how it provided the key to statistical mechanics (and these two are some of Jaynes' greatest inspirations).

Gibbs is also a chemistry and thermodynamics GOAT, so I would choose him to be in this list out of all of these.

Von Braun put a man on the moon so he has to be one of the 12

@JonathanRay Note that it's the top 16 that move on.

Why are people sleeping on Godel?

@Odoacre No doubt Gödel is probably the greatest logician ever lived. It is just that I (and I presume others) am skeptical of logic as a field.

@SanghyeonSeo logic is skeptical of you right back!

@SanghyeonSeo Why are you skeptical of it?

To clarify, Pascal is being nominated for his foundation of probability theory. In science, method contribution is as important as discovery contribution, and probability is probably the most important method contribution.

It's unclear that Pythagoras actually existed, let alone proved the results commonly attributed to him. (Source: math history lectures at Cambridge that I unfortunately can't show you, but also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO71rjwtP0w.)

@gregrosent The GOAT Ancient Greek mathematician is Eudoxus of Cnidus, but no one ever talks about him for some reason.

Euclid was the best textbook writer of his day, but didn't really prove anything original. If Euclid didn't exist, someone else would've written a marginally worse textbook, and the history of math would've been basically the same.

@gregrosent oh I don't know why I confused Euclid with Euler

@traders I just noticed that the description for this market didn't update to match the others when I made this change shortly after creating the market.

It was supposed to say "Subject to my final approval, the 16 candidates who have the most individual YES holders at the time of market closing will resolve YES, and all other candidates will resolve NO."

Since there are already people betting heavily YES and NO, and they likely made those bets understanding the rules as they were displayed, I'm going to leave the description as-is, and resolve the market based on the top 16 candidates by percentage.

Please accept my apologies for the error, and note that as I stated in the description, any attempts to manipulate the outcomes to earn mana will be subject to my final approval.

I'll be tracking this market, and if I see an option being bet up heavily near the end that was not near the Top-16 at any point, it will likely be resolved NO.