People who are just coming here and being surprised- this was a trick market designed to bait traders by Manifold's resident troll @levifinkelstein

For a serious market which actually asks this question, see below

@firstuserhere Why did he say he didn't talk to you?

@DavidBolin I don't have a way to refute the claim and don't recall the exact date we talked, seeding doubt

No way

Can you have a conversation with only vowels? It wouldn’t be a very long one, but maybe?

@MarkHamill hey, please note this was a trick market. He did not have a conversation with a whale, but a human.

In the description, it states that having conversation with a rich manifold trader is equivalent to having conversation with a whale for the purposes of this market

@firstuserhere Thanks, I got that! He threw in that bit at the end about decoding whale language using LLMs, which seems to be exactly what this paper has done, for vowels. And the timing right before this resolved is a shocking coincidence imo.

@MarkHamill yeah, its unfortunate for people like you and i who are actually interested in the main question!

@MarkHamill That is incorrect. They did not decode any language. They found patterns. No meaning.

@MarkHamill There is no interpretation of meaning there.

You had a call with a marine mammal? Please explain. This is a newsworthy event.

@BrianCaulfield true, he needs to post 100% proof this happened or manifold should force resolve to no!!!!

@CourierSix 😡

@CourierSix Agreed.

There are serious efforts by researchers across the globe to decode whale language.

A conversation with a marine mammal would be significant news, and the result of years of work.

There should be a market that follows this important effort in a serious way.

@BrianCaulfield There is

ok @levifinkelstein had a call with @MichaelWheatley

in which case, if the call is authentic, which it likely is (because they've had a call several times in the past as well), the market resolves YES correctly

@firstuserhere

@firstuserhere How does the call being authentic lead any credence to the claim that Levi had a conversation with a Whale?

@Kire_ Michael is a human big-money trader on Manifold, aka a whale.

Wtf is this bullshit😂

who was the whale?

I'm really new to manifold, but how is this allowed? This is the equivalent of insider trading. I understand it's fake money that can only be used to donate to charity (which is a net good in my opinion) but still...

@quadruple

This is the equivalent of insider trading

He doesn't know 👀

@quadruple If you bet on a question where a few people have all the power and knowledge to determine the resolution, expect insider trading. It sucks, I know, but take it as a learning experience.

@quadruple the market creator is banned because of overly subjective or insincere markets, but remaining markets remain open and will resolve over time. there are quite a few fairly subjective markets out there so you definitely have to be discerning in some cases to decide whether you want to participate. but imo this users markets aren't representative of what you'll find on the platform overall.

@quadruple Check out the creator's rating!