The debate is finally over. Resolution? Life wasted.

@strutheo You did the right thing and I'm proud of you for that. Never let the haters win.

It was kobayashi maru

if you're sick of the comment notifications on this market, here's the button to stop it:

Yes I mentioned that here: https://manifold.markets/strutheo/will-the-usa-win-the-most-gold-meda#yg3dxiwzkoc

yes I did it. I'm sorry. Or happy for you. Whichever happened.

But really it's.my bad and you can vent your frustrations in a reply to this comment.

All good, I was typing my rebuttal right now though lol. I'll still do it, as I believe it's totally flawed

It's still so fucked up if I had resolved this no I would have made thousands of mana without even betting. weird incentives

Also I wish I could close comments lol

Just click unwatch in the top right (3-dot menu), or does that not unsubscribe from the comments

thanks @strutheo for handling this resolution - no way to please everyone, for sure, but thanks for choosing a path 🙏

I think (hope) everyone got a little insight into defining clear criteria when making markets to avoid headaches after seeing how contentious this became.

(also, being able to close comments on resolved markets sounds like a feature request lol)

markets are a lot more fun without descriptions

good resolution, the question without tie resolution criteria implied American dominance, that hadn't happened, whereas they got "the most Gold medals" so the clearly implied thing didn't happen (50%) the specified thing happened (50%) -> 50/50

It didn't "imply American dominance", it asked, simply and without elaboration, did it win the most gold medals? Without question, the answer is YES

Edit: Lol you edited your comment as I typed my above rebuttal for it. Now you make up a new resolution criteria, claiming that the implication (which isn't actually totally implied) is somehow on equal footing with the specified thing (the only thing that matters). I think this is an attempt to rationalize the resolution that was made

conciser this hypothetical:
A question worded as such "Will the USA have the most people conscripted in their army by 20XX"
That wouldn't unequivocally resolve YES if the number would be exactly the same as a different competing nation, sure it's just a hypothetical but it is very similar in my mind.

I'm not going to rehash the debate here as we have literally covered every single angle in the comments below. But to respond, the reason why it "sounds like" it wouldn't resolve YES is because of the "bragging rights" nature of the question. This implication, as you call it, shouldn't matter as it's an optional one, it's not actually literally implied, it's your choice to believe if the question is trying to brag about America or not. Take it another way, if there was a market for the U.S., and a separate market for China, and one for Russia, on and on, with the exact same question, would each and every one of those markets resolve NO in the case of any tie? I don't think it should, I think at least one should always resolve YES, there is always a "most", it never ceases to exist. You and I are on the same page, it's the specified thing vs. implication, but I think the implication is less important specifically because: it is only semi-implied, meaning you can read the question calmly without thinking of bragging rights, and secondly, because the specified thing, in my opinion, matters far more if there aren't any other criteria. Like, we should bet on how it was written because we have nothing else to go off of

I think because of the Manifold having an America-centric bias the implication was much stronger than you are giving it credit, I did bet a longer time ago where it was still in the air if USA would be 1rst or 2nd and didn't even think about the tie but I did bet with my heuristic of "USA#1" markets being too optimistic in mind. So I think the 50/50 resolution (retrospectively) is fine.

😂 RIP your rating! I feel like I could've made strong arguments for at least 3 positions

Well lots of people here tried their best at making "strong arguments" for all positions. And they seemed to have been too weak to beat the YES position. I feel like with totality I defeated all the other positions, literally the last remaining argument is "but I mean maybe the question is bragging about America" and the response is "maybe it is, maybe it isn't, there's no extra information so bet based on the title's literal meaning alone", but just because some people were angry and adamant due to potential loss of mana, they kept the NO train going despite failing to elaborate most of the time. Only Jim did, and even that was debunked (but this question was resolved prior to my debunking, unfortunately).

All in all, this is the second time online I've done a total debunking yet the crowd had incentive not to agree and so just ignored the vast majority of the points. Not bad, but not great either. I've always been thinking of making a system/platform where comment debates would be regulated such that you can't ignore arguments, like you can't even hit reply unless you rebut or show that the onus is on them or something. Maybe an LLM can run when the send button is hit to check if you properly responded

RIP your rating

@strutheo has like 2500+ ratings i don't think people angry over this market are gonna make a dent either way tbh

there's no extra information so bet based on the title's literal meaning alone

I really think the context of the website where the question is posted (and its culture) is very important.

EDIT: changed "it's" to "its" as per Peter's comment urging me to do so

its*

Edit: thanks

Does anyone know how “most” is mostly used in technical contexts of similar situations ? Inclusive or exclusive?

Is think it's about 50/50. In other words, most of the time it's used inclusively, and most of the time it's used exclusively.

Just to rebut Samuel's humorous comment, to the people who actually think this is convincing, it isn't. As in the case of a limited pie, such as seats in a legislature, where there is a percentage involved, the word "most" actually converts to meaning a majority, aka 50%+1:

So the funny example doesn't apply to this question, just fyi

Isn't it "most" = majority, while "the most" = plurality? Who won the most gold medals? The USA and China each won a plurality. Who won most gold medals? Other countries won the majority.

Whereas there are a limited number of seats in a legislature, there were famously an unlimited number of medals to be won in the 2024 Olympic Games.

Samuel, your responses are missing key details of my comment. I clearly mentioned percentages, that's what changes the definition. In the case of medals, where we aren't caring about percentages, but rather solely on the number of medals won, the second definition doesn't apply. How crazy would it be to only use the word "most" to refer to majorities, we'd rarely ever hear the word

Congratulations, you've managed to convince me that YES would have been the wrong resolution.

You wanted 50/50, so I'm not sure what you mean here. You also didn't elaborate on what convinced you. What is it with people who don't like YES failing to elaborate on every position they take, it's genuinely boring talking with you