Manifest 2026 will take place June 12-14 in Berkeley, California. This market is for prop bets about the event! Note that all bets are about the Manifest conference itself and not LessOnline or Summer Camp.
Add anything that you think would be:
Fun to predict, might or might not happen
Reasonably simple to track whether it happened or not (nothing too hard to count)
Respectful of people's privacy
I will attend, and I'll resolve everything I can. But any staff or mods are welcome to resolve any options as well, as prop bet markets are hard for any one person to manage.
Markets will generally resolve according to the common sense expectation of how they were intended, not on technicalities. For example, a temporary tattoo would not count for the crane tattoo option. Market manipulation is encouraged as long as it is pro-social. Traders should also expect liberal use of N/A resolutions in ambiguous cases.
Update 2026-05-13 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The "BTC falls below $100,000 during the conference" option will be resolved N/A (it was a carryover from last year's market and is not applicable).
Update 2026-05-14 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The 'at least five people talking after 5am' option means five people are still awake and talking at 5am (i.e., a late night, not early morning). Evidence must be provided to the creator for resolution.
Update 2026-05-14 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): For the 'Someone wears a suit and tie' option:
Acceptable suits include: wetsuit, fursuit, bathing suit, partial fursuit, suit of armor, birthday suit, Hazmat suit, Pressure suit, Strongman suit, and others open to interpretation
Not acceptable: Jumpsuit or Tracksuit
A (visible) tie is not optional
Update 2026-05-27 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): For the 'Robin Hanson comes even though he's meant to be at the Public Outreach Conference' option: partial attendance counts as attendance for resolution purposes.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Trader | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ500 | |
| 2 | Ṁ346 | |
| 3 | Ṁ270 | |
| 4 | Ṁ266 | |
| 5 | Ṁ251 |
People are also trading
@traders I am going to do something drastic with the resolutions on this one if you don't respond with a case for or against unresolved options. Don't let your favorite prop bet get turned into never-happened.
Disclosure: I hold NO on "At least 3 Norwegian people attend." My case is thin, and I'll say so: I have seen no attendee list, photo, or post naming three Norwegians at a Berkeley conference of a few hundred people. If nobody here can name them, NO is the plain reading. If you'd rather not resolve on an absence, N/A is a fair call too. I won't pretend to know more than that.
The cycle continues.
@wasabipesto I'd actually object to this resolution. He was "meant" to be at Public Choice Outreach on the 13th and 14th of June, and he made it. He was only present at Manifest on Friday the 12th.
Therefore, Robin Hanson comes, but he was not meant to be at Public Choice Outreach at the time. I believe this needs more consideration before a resolution.
@wasabipesto Disclosure: I am the highest YES holder.
What does it mean to "mean" to be somewhere? This was not well defined from the start.
Say I ate ice cream even though I said I wanted to eat a brownie. However, you learn that I later ate a brownie after that.
Let's say there is a market that asked "Will Quroe eat ice cream even though he said he said he would eat a brownie?".
Would my eating the brownie cause that market to flip from a YES state to a NO state?
@Quroe I don't think that this analogy is parallel.
"Meant" implies that he has some obligation to be somewhere. But at the time he was at Manifest, he did not. He had an obligation for a date later in the conference, and he fulfilled that obligation.
He came, but he was never "meant" to be at another place while he was there.
@realTomBayes I can keep throwing analogies at this.
Alice meant to pay Bob $5. But she accidentally paid Eve $5. Alice then pays Bob $5 anyways, and Alice is down $10 in total instead of $5.
"Will Alice pay Eve $5 even though she meant to pay Bob $5?"
Clearly, this is still a YES.
@realTomBayes What does pasting in an LLM output prove? You can make a chat-bot say anything, & it has no way to evaluate the text it generates. Waste of time & resources.
@Quroe I think we have different understandings here.
You're considering "meant" as in "he intended to do this". But the question is "he's meant" -- meaning that an outside force is requiring that he complete an obligation.
He did intend to go to Manifest, you are correct. However, he wasn't meant to be somewhere else at the time due to an outside commitment.
Does that distinction make more sense? I want to make sure we're on the same page.
@realTomBayes @shankypanky I was operating on this clarification when I traded. What is the plain-reading interpretation of this?
@prismatic I took a stab at a bunch I'm pretty confident on, feel free to ping me or mods to re-resolve if anyone believes otherwise.
@shankypanky the bass bed had a giant cuddle pile (which I was part of, along with four other people directly on/under/around me and more beyond that) on the last night, though I suspect some prior nights had 5+ people cuddling together too. I also saw 6 people cuddling on a Bayes Ground couch during the afterparty.
@AviD yeah they often restock, but I remember early years the fridge was frequently emptied out some days. running out sometimes just means demand is outpacing availability