If you were here from the substack post and want to bet using the same mechanism, check out
Please read the entire description before betting!
1. Immediately after a new trader bets on the market
2. There is a 1/100 chance that the market resolves to the AMM probability that the new trader left the market at
This continues indefinitely, until the 1/100 hits.
Everyone else can trade in the meantime.
Say Steve just joined the market and moved it from 42 to 70:
- If the 1/100 hits, the market resolves to 70%
- If the 1/100 misses, it just continues
Upon market close, the last 10 traders will be managrammed 100 mana from me.
"Come from a laboratory" includes both an accidental lab leak and an intentional release. It also counts if COVID was found in the wild, taken to a lab for study, and then escaped from that lab without any modification.
I will not trade in this market.
(last check: 111 traders)
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ144 | |
| 2 | Ṁ121 | |
| 3 | Ṁ58 | |
| 4 | Ṁ56 | |
| 5 | Ṁ43 |
People are also trading
I know it has been extensively rehashed on the other COVID market, but I find it extremely strange that the Manifold consensus has been more or less entirely swayed by a single debate with incredibly poor epistemics between a software engineer and a VC guy. Nearly every Western government and intelligence agency, on both sides of the political spectrum, believe with weak confidence that COVID came from a lab leak. A plurality of virologists and epidemiologists have come around to this belief slowly, as well. It's kind of a silly question to forecast on because there will almost certainly never be a smoking gun either way at this point, meaning that these markets will never have a ground truth to resolve to. Perhaps that's why the community is, in my opinion, so miscalibrated about this.
@bens I don't know anything about it whatsoever other than I looked at the other market and made a token bet of 1 mana in that direction to see if it would resolve this one. If you think you have a good idea that it's a Yes, then convincing people in the comments seems like a reasonable step to take!
@bens wait, I thought the party line among western governments and mainstream media was the exact opposite, that it was natural zoonosis and the lab leak is a far right conspiracy theory?
@bens do you have a writeup anywhere addressing Peter's arguments, and commentary post-debate? Or a preferred rebuttal?
@AffineTyped I guess I'll add that you may just be expressing frustration and not trying yourself to have good epistemics here, but I'll report that my own response (as someone who hasn't watched Peter's debate, but does know epidemiologists and virologists and network theorists who are all solidly NO), to the nature of your writeup was definitely a raised eyebrow. Addressing only the occupations of the debaters is at least a bit of a surprising approach to me, considering we are trading on a website where many of the top trafers make significant profits outside of their occupations, and the site itself exists in the context of a community where people frequently write compelling, well researched arguments outside of their occupation's domain.
I also find language like "nearly every western government" slippery. Which ones? Why? Are the reports published anywhere, and do they rebut the arguments held to be strong? I am not under the impression that my own government, the Canadian one, actually holds a position on this but didn't look very deeply. I find the appeal here suspicious as well, considering once again that I'm not sure we should update strongly on what governments simpliciter, let alone plausibly adversarial governments have to say on authority.
Continuing on, I likewise find the "plurality of ..." comment suspect, and surprising. A brief search on my end only found one survey which seems to not confirm that comment: https://www.science.org/content/article/virologists-and-epidemiologists-back-natural-origin-covid-19-survey-suggests . My own experience with a number of individuals studying this topic directly is that the opposite is true, and indeed the zoonotic case has only gained strength in their eyes (last time I talked to any of them was May or so, so maybe something drastic changed recently, or I am talking to a small cluster of scientists who are in the minority opinion). Is there a survey you could point to? Moreover, once again I am unsure to what degree one should update on surveys of the field. I'm much more interested in empirical data, arguments presented, and how well both stand up to peer review irrespective of who presents them.
Again, you may just be venting some frustration which I understand, but as written this kind of comment is an unfortunate (but small, mind you) downwards update for me on your reasonability. Would be happy to see what led you to conclude these things though, as it may both cause me to come to the same conclusion as you as well as erase a bit of the confusion I have around your own epistemics and writing from this post.
@NivlacM haha thanks, in this case though I should clarify that I have not read about it in depth, my main source is this BBC article I half remember skimming last year: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8095xjg4po
Uhhh, I don't really understand the mechanism, and the first sentence of the criteria is phrased really awkwardly, which makes me think I'm misunderstanding it. Any chance you can try to rewrite the description a second way @nikki ? I've read it over like 3x and still don't think I'm understanding it right.
Also this pre-print has a lot of words in it, but I kind of feel this is one of those perpetual motion machines; I just literally do not think a self-resolving market can ever capture anything other than a popularity contest.
I'm going to bet my true beliefs because it's fun and for the sake of the market, or whatever, but I don't have any illusions that this is a strategy to profit on this market, which is unfortunate.
Resolution mechanism:
1. Immediately after a new trader bets on the market
2. There is a 1/100 chance that the market resolves to the AMM probability that the new trader left the market at
This continues indefinitely, until the 1/100 hits.
Everyone else can trade in the meantime.
Say Steve just joined the market and moved it from 42 to 70:
- If the 1/100 hits, the market resolves to 70%
- If the 1/100 misses, it just continues
@Eliza woah, I think @nikki needs to clarify (not that it matters in terms of my betting strategy, lol), because my literal read of the description was:
immediately after a new trader bets on the market
there is a 1/100 chance that the market resolves to the AMM probability of the PREVIOUS trader's FIRST bet (even if that was their n'th bet)
I kind of feel this is one of those perpetual motion machines; I just literally do not think a self-resolving market can ever capture anything other than a popularity contest.
well said, I'm betting purely on the market mechanism, completely divorced from the title question
@Eliza Yes, the problem is that the scoring rule is not the same here. The mechanism in which the agents sequentially express their beliefs doesn't translate to this market even though they are equivalent (see https://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.5252 ).