Use mana to let the team know what you think about how they're running the website. 100% means everyone is happy with the direction Manifold is going and the team behind it, and 0% means something has probably gone tragically wrong.
Does not impact profit rankings
Permanently open market, will not resolve.
Other Approval Ratings:
/strutheo/what-will-manifolds-approval-rating
/strutheo/what-will-manifolds-approval-rating-69a6850abbfb
Related questions
Man I just want to say that I think this pivot seems like a good idea, I can see that the Manifold team has worked hard to come up with a good solution and it's actually delivering on that, and a lot of the objections don't make all that much sense to me.
So, thanks to the team, and I hope the users will be able to better see the merits of the changes without being too anchored by their existing expectations.
please vote in james poll as honestly as possible without spite or poor judgement
https://manifold.markets/JamesGrugett/which-of-these-would-you-want-back
I just read here https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/A-New-Deal-for-Manifold-c6e9de8f08b549859c64afb3af1dd393 that the Mana purchasing rate will change on May 1st to 1$ -> 1000Mana, same for donations - and the rates until now are 1$ -> 100Mana. There's also a mention that
"We will backfill profits on users’ profile pages and the site leaderboard to be 10x higher, in line with the mana purchase changes".
Does this mean every Mana unit held by any current Manifold user in their balance and or marets will be multiplied by 10 ? Or will some worth be lost ?
@Mich Worth is being lost so Manifold can report Mana as a liability. If they kept the current worth they wouldn’t have enough money to cover it.
@Mich
> Does this mean every Mana unit held by any current Manifold user in their balance and or marets will be multiplied by 10 ?
No, the graph will show a higher profit, but we will not get more mana than we have, it is just to show how much profit we would have done is this system was in place from the start.
I think it would be better to not hide these kind of changes, and only reveal it when a lot of time was spend to implement them and everything is in place.
It would also be good to be more informed about the goals of important modifications like these, I read people saying we should understand Manifold should make money asap, but I never read anything about this before now.
And I think the community can help with the decisions, with brainstorming, debates, and some futarchy like markets about how to fix some of the current problems (given we know the problems and the situation).
Debates can be interminable and it would be bad to lose too much time reading them, but the people debating can build some summary at the end, at least if there are some expectations it will be read.
On futarchy, Austin say the leadership doesn't dogfood their decisions because markets are not powerful enough, but if so, is there some way to fix it ? And was it really tried (sometime I randomly find some markets like that, but it is lost in the flow of markets, and there aren't many bettors, and it doesn't feel like it will influence decisions at all) ?
I have hope in prediction markets (and in particular in prediction markets with fake money) and it is why I am here, but if it can work, it feels like it should be able to work for itself.
And if we didn't help, I hope that at least there would be more understanding and agreement with the decisions.
Maybe I am completely wrong (in fact, I just don't understand why the number of users is stagnating, and it is quite important and show my understanding of the situation is bad), but I didn't see people talking about this, so here it is.
@dionisos The number of users is stagnating because the product, as presented does not have mass appeal, & the "free speech at all costs" culture does not help broaden the appeal either. When people surf through & find badged moderators posting slur markets, & people betting on terrorism, it is something of a turnoff to most people.
@ChurlishGambit The “free speech” culture very much goes hand in hand with what Manifold is. They do say “a market for every question.” The problem is that the community is stuck within one niche, I don’t think restricting free speech on Manifold would fix it.
@ChurlishGambit
> The number of users is stagnating because the product, as presented does not have mass appeal
But this isn't very specific, it is almost the same thing than saying the number of users is stagnating (not exactly, but it is near).
> & the "free speech at all costs" culture does not help broaden the appeal either. When people surf through & find badged moderators posting slur markets, & people betting on terrorism, it is something of a turnoff to most people.
I read some comments talking about people being put-off by the community here (about it being too much EA, not about free speech), I don't know but it is maybe an important problem.
I love the EA community, and I mostly like the free speech openness on opinions, but I see how it could be off-putting, I think.
My bet is that there is no way to have a community which isn't off-putting to some other community, and the way to deal with it, is to have multiple communities on the same system, where the system mostly show them what happen in their community, even if they can go where they want.
@dionisos >there is no way to have a community which isn't off-putting to some other community
Well, sure, but allowing free use of slurs & gambling on terrorism, is a great way to turn off a whole lot of people. Not allowing free use of slurs, not allowing gambling on terrorism, turns a much smaller amount of people.
@ChurlishGambit One of these things is not like the other: free use of slurs is an unfortunate side effect of a free speech policy largely orthogonal to the site's appeal (and the merit of which i have no interest in debating rn). Gambling on terrorism, meanwhile, is a perfectly legitimate use case for prediction markets: it takes something relevant people would benefit from knowing (will there be a terrorist attack in [time-place-range]) and forecasts probability using a market mechanism. You may argue this contravenes nebulous etiquette, but traditional, legitimate-by-consensus stock markets have no such qualms, and gamble implicitly on this kind of thing all the time - just look at how they've moved appreciably in recent days because of fluctuations in the probability of war in the middle east!
All that said, I'm not convinced by the pivot and think the site's days are probably numbered. Still, it's been an engaging experiment up to now.
@ChurlishGambit I don't think slurs is allowed ?
https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Comment-guidelines-c4b4e6b0b0064b268970388f692c4745
I like that we can mostly openly share opinions (but I am not really an absolutist about it), but I don't think an insult is really an opinion, it is more like an attack.
@ChurlishGambit Even if you aren’t immediately banned for using a slur, it is heavily discouraged to attack other users here. You definitely won’t be respected if you do that.
Levi was banned as a result of scamming people multiple times, resolving markets in bad faith, and attacking others, so anything you heard from him is not indicative of Manifold policies.
@ChurlishGambit His neo-fascist "just asking questions" markets really cement this place's "right-wing tech-bro" vibe that most EA projects have succumbed to. It's just not appealing to a mass audience, unless what you want is a mass of right-wing tech bros...
@AngolaMaldives It is ghoulish to make real money by betting on terrorism. Vile, to most people. If people here can't understand that this isn't a charismatic thing to do, that it turns people off to see it, then the perspectives here are more distorted than even the loudest critics have believed.
@ChurlishGambit It’s only bad insofar as you are incentivized to cause terrorism due to these markets. I agree that the terrorism markets shouldn’t be real money due to this. (I don’t think that is a terribly unpopular position among the community, but I could be wrong)
However, prediction markets can be a useful tool. If a government knows that a terrorist attack is likely, they’re going to increase security measures. So if experts are betting that it might happen, that would give useful info. That’s one of the advantages of play money.
@ShadowyZephyr The issue is, "profiting off of death & killing." Do you not understand why that is a ghoulish thing to do?
As far as increasing security measures to prevent terrorism...that doesn't really work unless they have pretty much all the information ahead of time. Using a prediction market to upgrade the alert color won't do anything.
@ChurlishGambit If there's one thing Manifold is NOT, it's right-wing. 😂
If you looked around a bit more here, it'd become obvious.
@ShadowyZephyr I mean, tbf to them, Hanania is taken somewhat seriously on this site, and I think there's a reasonably good case you can make against Alexander as well. But SV's (imo) insane love for certain iconoclasts doesn't entail that the SV culture is itself right wing. SV is just.... weird.
We have some survey on it : https://manifold.markets/PlasmaBallin/what-is-the-ratio-of-democrats-to-r
"There were 29 times as many Democrats as Republicans."
@dionisos I saw people singing his praises in the market he set up about the Al Shifa hospital raid.
@Najawin the majority of people here are not singing his praises. and the Al Shifa market was quite contentious.
@Najawin There are definitely some right-wingers, and we can expect there were a bigger proportion of them in a market done by Hanania himself.
I think the survey is a better data point.
@shankypanky Of course it was. I very much remember it. But it's still enough to worry me. (tbf, the occasional presence of Big Yud is also enough to worry me, but for other reasons.)
And yeah, I don't think people here are like hard right. I think there's just a strain of weirdness in Silicon Valley culture that likes people such as Hanania.
I for one think the site is more valuable with a variety of people and opinions. there's far less benefit to having a prediction market site that is an echo chamber - what can we accurately predict if we're all of the same mindset?
I understand you have your own perspectives and of course if you don't want to be in the company of people that are on the right that's your own (respectable) choice! personally I'm more worried when I'm not exposed to different voices, even if sometimes their side is challenging to hear, as long as we respect one another and are simply sharing our sides. I've never felt like anyone is forcing their ideas or agenda on me, though people do feel passionate about their side sometimes (myself included).
@shankypanky The issue here isn't right v left, at least for me. It's more kook v normal. I think BTE is a kook as well. I obviously can't speak for ChurlishGambit.
@Najawin I'm not sure what "kook" means in tangible terms (or "normal," for that matter) but as I understand it, you're saying there are some people that are just too far off from where you're at and that feels worrisome.
@shankypanky the genius thing about this website, compared to any other social media, is that if people here are consistently wrong, I can take their mana.
The different opinions are a lot more palatable when they're backed up with good world models
@shankypanky Well Hanania has literally written white supremacist stuff, so I'm not sure that massive and profound disagreements with him can be worrisome. And BTE has displayed some of the most stunning examples of motivated reasoning I've ever seen.
@Najawin oh I was only using the term worry/worrisome because that's what you used in your earlier comment and that's what I understood your position to be.
@shankypanky Ahhhh, gotcha. No. It's not that they have substantially different beliefs, it's that the epistemological frameworks they have to generate these beliefs are fundamentally broken. Often to be so far off they have to have broken epistemologies, but not always, and the converse isn't true at all.
@Najawin ah okay. well, as robm said above, you can profit from people you find to be fundamentally incorrect in their bets. and when it comes to their markets, you can definitely avoid them (which I do sometimes and tbh it can be a bummer because sometimes those people make the markets I'm looking to bet on lol). Manifold does let creators control their own markets with a fair bit of leniency but if they're resolving incorrectly or disingenuously or continually benefitting from being bad as a creator, there are policies about it. but not about people's worldview or way of thinking about problems.
I think we just have different outlooks here. are you mentioning this on the leadership approval market because you think these people shouldn't have a place on the site? or just because the conversation flowed in that direction? I know I kind of stepped in on a long thread and started asking questions - thanks for talking it through btw
@shankypanky Flowed in that direction, lol. And I made a fair bit from BTE being kooky. (Edit: Also, I think the fact there are so many utilitarians here is nutso. But again, different issue.)
@ShadowyZephyr I am disappointed, but not surprised, that absolutely zero people expressed any sympathy or grief at Cookie's passing. I am surprised, however, that the direct response was "We're not right-wing, idiot."
The userbase may have some Democrats in it, but 1. Democrats are not left-wing 2. The overall tone of the questions is generally conservative, & leadership is ardently conservative.
Take, for example, James' recent McCarthyist rant about FDR:
Followed by a badged moderator doubling down:
This is the attitude from the top, & it pervades the site and the EA movement. Angry libertarians expressing hard reactionary beliefs, harboring century-old grudges against Communism, & so forth. The site cannot grow how they wish it to, with this level of 1940s right-wing toxicity at its crown. Which is ironic, because ardent conservatives have a great deal of difficulty honestly dealing with reality & probability.
@ChurlishGambit well, firstly, I don't see anyone calling anyone an idiot - where are you quoting that from?
secondly, I doubt anyone here took a comment in this thread seriously about a user recently removed from Discord passing away without any context. people say a lot of things.
sounds like you don't like the content or user base here, which is fine of course! not everywhere is for everyone. if the site doesn't provide what you want, what is it that keeps you here? (genuinely asking - I'm not the "if you don't like it then leave" type at all)
@shankypanky I'm particularly not surprised that you, even after having an explicit second chance to express a modicum of empathy, chose not to. She really was right about the kind of folks who engage here
@ChurlishGambit I don’t know who Cookie is, so I felt it wouldn’t be proper to comment on it, especially since I wasn’t sure if it was some weird joke, given the context you brought it up in. I was simply responding to the topic of the thread, and I am sorry that it came off as insensitive, and I give my condolences to you.
Leadership is probably more conservative than the community as a whole. But who are we to prevent James from expressing his opinion? Are you saying that admins/mods shouldn’t be able to talk about politics? The fact that people here are able to disagree completely but still respect each other instead of going up in arms is a sign that this community is not toxic, if anything.
As I stated before, Manifold needs to have free speech if it is to be useful for information aggregation and prediction. We need to be able to hear every angle, even if we don’t agree with them.
@ChurlishGambit "Democrats are not left-wing"
They're not leftists. But by any reasonable standard of the political spectrum they are, in fact, left-wing. You can be left-wing without being a leftist.
"harboring century-old grudges against Communism"
I mean, I assume the grudge is related to contemporary communists, or to the ideology itself, no? Not that actions of Stalin a century ago being referenced there are what's so upsetting. Since, you know, Stalin wasn't a communist.
@SemioticRivalry Oh, I wasn’t aware this person was banned. The way it was mentioned did come off as very odd to me, I thought it was some kind of inside joke.
@SemioticRivalry funny that Cookie wouldn't join Manifold (but would join the Discord) but after ousted finally created an account over here 🫠
@shankypanky Can someone give me the full story? (This was during my period of inactivity, I assume) Why would you start a crusade against Manifold if you weren’t even on the site? Why were they banned?
@ShadowyZephyr I think we're on a few pretty big tangents here on the Leadership market - I can DM you here or Discord but I'd rather not keep this thread going like this on an unrelated market if that's alright with you?
@Gabrielle "Churlish Gambit" 's first market bet on was a couple hours after Cookie was banned from the discord
@SemioticRivalry Agreed. Used to be a CosmicCookie fan because her previous trolling always had well-informed counter-arguments at its core, but this is just silly.
@ChurlishGambit
> There's a right-wing bias across the site. When Isaac King makes markets about "trans ideology," that's not a neutral term. It's a right-wing framing, which declares that trans identity is not an identity, but an ideology, & implies it's one to be combatted.
I can see how "trans ideology" isn't neutral, but it doesn't declare that the trans identity isn't an identity (this is just two different things), nor that it imply the trans ideology should be combatted.
What is the status of Isaac King ?
@ChurlishGambit The message is hidden but I can click on it to see it.
It seems to me Isaac isn't a moderator (https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing) (https://manifold.markets/NathanpmYoung is a moderator, and we can see the badge here)
@ChurlishGambit "the salient McCarthyist portion of James' comment is not about Stalin, it's the part where he's snarling about "literal Communists" in FDR's cabinet."
See: "I mean, I assume the grudge is related to contemporary communists, or to the ideology itself, no?" (Hence, it's seen as a problem in and of itself to have communists in your cabinet because you think the ideology is flawed. I disagree. But, you know, this position is, I think, less insane than you're portraying it.)
@ChurlishGambit
transsexuality isn't an ideology at all, this would be a type error and make no sense.
What "trans ideology" means is unclear, but it is probably about the political position that we should accept transsexuality (which is good), which is completely different than the trans identity, which is just being trans.
And there is a negative connotation about "ideologies", but this connotation is just stupid, absolutely no positions on anything can be defended without an ideology.
I really feel like you are drawing a lot of conclusions from just the use of a particular expression
@dionisos He’s upset that we aren’t uncritically accepting the framing and terminology of left-wing advocacy organizations (“the truth does lean left” after all), which means we’re right wing. Totally makes sense. Just ignore him.
@strutheo I wanted to continue in private message but Gambit is against it, and I respect that, but I still wanted to answer.
Unless any of this has anything to do with specific leadership gripes I think this thread has gone down too many tangents and personal opinions etc. best to both not feed the trolls, and leave this market for actual things that Leadership et al should take note of at a time where a lot of people have a lot of relevant things to say. 🧡
@ChurlishGambit I think your comments were hidden because you are way off-topic. Start a poll or market of your own and link to it. Put money in it if you think you are right.
@shankypanky I have no opinion about if this was a tentative of troll or not (and don't want to assume it was), but ok you are right, this isn't the correct place for this debate, and I will refrain to answer here.