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He’s back!

@NicoDelon The return of the King

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/will-manifold-help-me-find-a-lawyer

Will Manifold help me find a lawyer willing to help us pro bono with nonprofit law?

49% chance. (Temporarily breaking my Manifold embargo for something important to me that this platform seems like a good place for.) A nonprofit organization I'm involved with is looking for a lawyer with experience in nonprofit law to double-check their work. We can probably pay something, but not the standard rate for legal work. This isn't an EA-aligned cause, but it's something that I personally think is a positive for the world, and I would very much like to see it succeed. (It does have some minor EA-related externalities like improved epistemics, which is one of the reasons I support it, but not to an extent that would justify it for EA reasons.) I'm guessing in total we'd need a few hours of consulting. Some smart people have done their own legal research, but none of them are lawyers, so we need someone to confirm we haven't missed anything before we proceed. If you or someone you know might be willing to help, please reach out. My email address is "is.aack@yahoo.com". If you put me in contact with someone who can help, I'd be happy to offer you a finder's fee in mana. Market resolves based on whether it seems to have helped me find someone. If we find someone via a path unrelated to Manifold, it resolves NO.

Does it include only that account or also his second account? He currently can't make new markets on his original account because of the negative balance

@jack @DavidChee are we going to forgive that debt?

@ian Probably not. Isaac hasn't replied to my dm so it doesn't seem like he has any intention of returning.

@DavidChee Seems like we should just forgive the debt anyways tho? So that he can use the account if he wants to, regardless of whether he responds to you or not

@ian I'm still not convinced of debt forgiveness and don't think having 1000 mana on his main vs an alt to trade with is a contributing factor on whether he uses the site or not. We can discuss this further if you want, but I dont think that I'd much point to do so as he hasnt even indicated he wants to return.

@DavidChee He's a valuable community member that made a mistake. We already paid out the mana he lost, do we expect him to buy another 30k in order to use his account? What's the point in keeping his account negative? It doesn't do anything other than prevent him from contributing.

@ian his contribution I faced with was: several unreasonable bans of me and other people.

I am fine with stopping him from contributing, he is the most toxic person on the platform.

@KongoLandwalker also I feel he would live a better life never coming back. He might need a therapy, not another chance to be sucked into "being right" game.

Isaac hasn't replied to my dm so it doesn't seem like he has any intention of returning.

I'm only checking Discord every few days now, just like I am with Manifold. I'll probably go through my messages there later today or tomorrow. Wasn't about you in particular, I was ignoring everyone equally.

I'm still not convinced of debt forgiveness and don't think having 1000 mana on his main vs an alt to trade with is a contributing factor on whether he uses the site or not.

Note that this implies that if it were a contributing factor, you'd be more likely to be in favor, and that provides an incentive for me to say I'll only come back if it's forgiven. I'm not going to do that, but you probably want to make policies in a way that doesn't make it easy for people to extort you.

To answer the object-level question, placing bets and creating markets on my alt account is only a minor inconvenience for me. It does slightly lower the engagement I'll get (fewer followers there), and I'd no longer have the incentive to maintain my position on the market creator leaderboard. Also, it would be annoying for people to click on my name and only see half my activity on the single account page they're shown.

You could always swap the balances of my two accounts in order to remove those downsides while not forgiving the debt.

My primary reason for leaving is not that my balance is highly negative, no. It's all the other reasons I've already described elsewhere. Those would need to be at least partially resolved before I'd actively want to use the site again.

Also, seems worth noting that Manifold's policy in the past has been "if someone's account goes negative, we don't consider them to owe us mana, and it's fine if they want to abandon that account and make a new one". This was explicitly stated, by you if I'm not mistaken. Treating me differently seems like yet another inconsistent application of the rules, though admittedly here I'm definitely a special case.

@ian Don't play favorites. Don't subsidize poor judgement. Don't forgive the debt. Don't think this means I don't respect Isaac (I do).