https://blog.coredump.cx/p/haunted-by-the-ghosts-of-materialism

Haunted by the ghosts of materialism

Is philosophy real? We sent our correspondent to find out.

Someone is calling the mods in here. I checked, the creator is inactive.

I'm turning off adding new submissions. No one gets to have fun when the boss is away.

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I really don't want to read the entire market description, it looks like it is filled with tons of details about several specific options. At this time I see there was a prohibition on any resolutions until a trial was complete, my reading indicates that he has pleaded guilty to something and I'm counting that as one trial is complete enough to do something.

So I will resolve "Chronic back pain" Yes since there is a definitive report shared below that looks uncontroversial.

Everything else is in the hands of the market creator still and it looks like they were upset because people were bothering them, and there is no rush. So maybe we can re-evaluate at the end of the year.

@Eliza Is there a way to disavow markets? I do not want to be associated with this market at this point. It has completely ruined my enjoyment of Manifold.

I have not researched this in depth, and wish that people who had stake in these markets would do this rather than expect me to do it, or you, but I disagree that a guilty plea and a very cursory trial live update establishes motivation. I would prefer to have complete transcripts rather than journalistic summaries, which are optimized for their marketability, not for the truth.

Also, I do not think that it is uncontroversial that even the presented sources establish back pain as a motive. They establish that back pain happened before the shooting, and interpreting that as a motive is the post hoc ergo proptor hoc fallacy.

At the time I made this market, I expected Manifold to be above such things. I expected people to know that when they are wagering on the subjective internal state of a person, they are making a very hard to establish claim. I wanted to see the results of this market as a way to gauge what the Manifold community, of which I had a higher opinion at the time than I do now, thought about this question. Like other markets that are effectively unresolvable on Manifold, users can claw back their mana in loans over time. I regret attempting this now.

All of these seem very basic, and while I appreciate the difficulty of Manifold as a private company trying to maximize engagement, which implies doling out these little dopamine hits of successful predictions, I do not think it is in accordance with truth-seeking. I appreciate that I am being a stickler about this. I did not think this would be controversial at Manifold, a project that is nominally supportive of truth-seeking. I still believe in Manifold and in the capacity of prediction markets for truth-seeking, but politics is ever the mind killer and I do not feel like Manifold has done a good job of supporting truth seeking as an institution while managing this market. This saddens me deeply.

@tedks This is the life we live from the days of living with the shoulders of the giants? You will be making this the issues you are giving the timing of your day for to cry tears in this very second when there is beauty to be found in life? Please give the chartered psychologist a call for the trauma treating of such the strong symptoms, I know it is helping for me with the various market resolutions I have resolved to be maybe not so resolving correctly, old sport. We riding together into this darkness of righting no and the wronging yes, to the highest degrees of passion in the night. Why does it feel so good?

@tedks no problem, I will undo that one and you can sort it out later.

@tedks I unresolved the back pain one as you requested.

I am totally okay with you waiting as long as you want to resolve your options. But that requires you to actually still be there to do it later. If you disappear indefinitely or disavow the market, then the moderators will do their best to interpret what you established the rules to be.

In this case, I read the rules and it seemed to me they supported resolving based on the news reports with a direct statement about back pain. Then you showed up explaining that is not the level you are looking for, which is fine. I trust you will handle it. And now everyone understands better what you're looking for.

So if you really want to disavow it, I think it will be hard to justify any moderator action because you have set a very high bar.

@tedks I don't quite understand this point of yours, though:

I do not feel like Manifold has done a good job of supporting truth seeking as an institution while managing this market.

This may be a large source of the confusion here -- Manifold is not managing the market -- it is your market. You get to create the market, you control the rules, you control what counts and does not count. It's your market to manage.

But you are at the same time trying to disavow the market, in which case someone else is going to make a cursory effort to decipher what you were trying to do and attempt to handle it. Because it is your question, no one else will be as invested in it as you are.

You get to be a stickler! It's your corner of the site, right here. But you also have to hold up your end of the bargain. Last time you said you wanted to wait for a trial. A trial happened. People brought new information. We waited six weeks in case you showed up, no moderators did anything. You never showed up to comment on the new issue (which seemed like a very reasonable request for clarification/direction), so I followed the procedures we have for an abandoned market and used my own judgement based on your prior comments here.

And still you disagreed, and I still defer to you, and now everyone knows more.

@Eliza Good points. Here's where I stand on this:
- I would love to be able to move on from this market because it is not enjoyable to be continuously harassed over it. If there are tools to block/mute individual users, they're not obvious to me. I wish I could click a button that says "disavow" and be able to use Manifold again without endless notifications from this market. I stopped caring about this market a long time ago.
- I have not gotten the impression that I am the local authority here. There have been previous mod actions that maybe were motivated by some period of inaction from me, but again, I have basically been driven off of Manifold by this market. I also think previous mod actions likely took place with less inactivity on my side. This gives me the impression that the endless horde of users eager to close their own positions could overrule me at any point by appealing to mods. Thank you for clarifying the situation. This is maybe something that could be corrected at market creation time, though obviously I've been away for a long time. When these mod actions come, they tend to be a cursory overview of whatever the loudest crying user says followed by taking the action they recommend.

Also, there was some AI feature that would bloat the market description every time I tried to respond to one of the many, many comments about this. It seems you did not have a positive experience with that either and I'm not sure it adds to clarity.

Thank you for your tireless work weeding the Manifold garden - I do appreciate it and I apologize for my tone when another email from this market pulled me back into the sewer that it has sadly become.

@tedks

I appreciate you're willing to engage on this. Maybe we can bring it to a clear plan soon.

I am temporarily closing trading while we discuss this, to prevent any confusion from users causing large swings. We can reopen it afterward if we want to continue allowing trading.

1. There's no built in feature to disavow a market. "We" have begged for that for years, to transfer the 'ownership', but it's never been added, sadly.

2. I think the annoying AI clarification thing is not happening as much anymore, but it leaves a mess.

3. At this point we should make a clear and binding decision regarding the future of this market. I think our list of options (and their drawbacks) is roughly:

   1. If you're truly uninterested and you just want it to stop, we can N/A the entire thing. Everyone's mana is returned. That includes a significant amount of mana that was paid to you as a trader bonus for attracting people with your market. You'd likely lose a few thousand mana. Traders may be upset that they worked hard to predict things and their mana was tied up for a long time; they might leave a low star rating on a review of your market, but retaliation beyond that would be unacceptable and the rating is ~meaningless. As far as I'm aware, you can do this if you wish, even on a highly traded market, but it isn't to be taken lightly.

   2. You can find a moderator who is willing to take over your market and run it as if it was their own. They would need to resolve all outstanding questions and internal conflicts, and choose their own methodology for bringing the market to a close. This may not be in line with your original vision for the market. So you would need to be willing to accept that you are completely washing your hands of it and basically just ignore whatever result happens. Many traders might be generally ~happy here, maybe some will say the process didn't match your own outline. My suspicion is that any moderator you find to take it over would resolve the whole thing on a much faster timeline than you had originally planned on.

   3. You can choose to continue being the boss of the market and reinforce your existing choices. To me, that would mean fully updating the market description to match the current state of affairs, clarifying your envisioned timeline in a special statement at the very top so any participants know what they are getting themselves into, and basically a reinforcement that "tedks is the boss of this market and he's going to just ignore you if you're asking for things on your own timeframe". This is a thing that happens sometimes, we kinda just wait it out for a year or two then the creator shows back up again and may or may not decide to resolve things.

Maybe there are other options but that's what I'm thinking so far.

If you decide you want a moderator to take it over, I'm fairly confident they will interpret the market based on earlier formulations of the criteria which probably favored a fast resolution, and they may even resolve every option right away.

If you truly want to go with the N/A route and forfeit several thousand mana, I don't think there is anything in the site guidelines that prohibit it, and there is certainly an argument here that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding between the market creator, the creators of individual options, and the participants.

@10thOfficial

Luigi Mangione admits killing healthcare boss as victim's family condemn 'heinous act'

@mods creator inactive

Chronic Back Pain resolves YES

@jim @mods it's beyond any doubt that this wasn't a random act of violence, right? Can resolve NO

@GazDownright @mods @jim I don't think it's "beyond any doubt" that this was a random act of violence. It's very possible that Luigi Mangione might not even have been involved with the killing, and has been being held because of a planted weapon. If that's the case, then we know basically nothing about the killer.

As an aside, this market has basically ruined my enjoyment of manifold. Every time I log in I am deluged by crap from users like this who are incapable of simply waiting for the situation to actually be clear, which it turns out, is nowhere near when I originally put the end date for on this market (sorry, I was bad at estimating timing - execute me). We will probably not know the certainties of this case for 5-10 years. If the wailing and gnashing of teeth of users without patience can resolve markets earlier than the actual truth of the matter, the mods might as well use their judgement and resolve this market however they want. I wanted to wait for a trial. We haven't even gotten into a trial yet. Generally, a trial is how these questions are answered in America. I do not consider the court of public opinion sufficient to resolve anything on this market. But again, if the mods do, I invite them to just close everything however they want, and demonstrate a tragic lack of commitment to truth on behalf of Manifold as an organization.

@tedks who are "users like this"? Whoever it is, such disparaging remarks makes me just stop reading whatever you had to say, as I don't want to risk being deluged by crap.

@tedks I agree that until there is a trial, it hasn't been proven that Luigi is the responsible party so it's not possible to reliably resolve anything about the "assassin." if Luigi is found guilty, resolutions should be based on what we know about him or information that comes from the trial. for now, he has plead Not Guilty and is awaiting his day(s) in court.

remember there's never anything stopping you from having fun on the internet.

@shankypanky Fwiw, I've got no issue if you reopen this option.

But no court case can look inside a perpetrator's brain, so relying solely on the outcome of a court case to resolve motives is a bit too rigid.

However, for this particular outcome, is it even debatable?

Random doesn’t come with pre-written slogans on the ammo, and it definitely doesn’t come with a message that so obviously reads like a beef with the insurance/claims apparatus. Whatever the exact motive turns out to be, the act was planned + targeted, not a meaningless/indiscriminate outburst.

Also note, this market isn't about Luigi, it's about the assassin, whoever it is (>99% likely to be Luigi).

@GazDownright

>who are "users like this"?

You can look on the comments of this question and see them. They are people who incessantly rail in favor of their particular view. They are people who, like you, give me 5+ notifications per round of interactions. People who beg me to resolve options in a certain way. It is not fun.

I expect a trial to surface evidence that has not surfaced and I think it is reasonable to wait until at least one trial has concluded to resolve any of these questions.

@tedks Is this sufficient?

Luigi Mangione admits killing healthcare boss as victim's family condemn 'heinous act'

Luigi Mangione admits killing healthcare boss as victim's family condemn 'heinous act'

Mangione, 28, pleads guilty to federal charges in New York. After the hearing, Thompson's family say "nothing will ease the pain of losing him".

@tedks Don't you think this can be resolved?

@TheWabiSabi why is this trading so high? He didn’t even have a policy with UHC, so we’re not looking at a reaction to a wrongfully denied claim.

@Marnix how does the inclusion of the "radical" qualifier affect this question? Is it any different than simply saying "a set of beliefs"?

When is this market going to resolve?

@nsokolsky when they prove it

@realDonaldTrump feels like never