[lelanthran]

> An IPO is a binary choice where it either goes public or not. There is no correct value to converge to.

Of course there is - they are betting on the "when".

> It has been shown that as bettors gain more information about the bets of others, predictions lose accuracy and bettors converge to a consensus value instead.

I dunno how to reply to this - that is exactly my point, but it appears (to me, anyway) that you are saying this in disagreement?

Let me clarify - my point is that wisdom of the crowd converges on to a value that is quite near the actual value.

> In the case of an OpenAI IPO, it seems likely multiple of these would converge as people start to fall prey to groupthink because "everybody knows that they'll IPO soon" in their local media bubble.

Sure, if everyone is in the same local media bubble, that once again, that is unlikely, because these are people who don't make money from the result, they make money from correctly predicting it, hence they are exactly the demographic that will seek out more and more information outside of any bubble they may be in.

It's one thing when proponents of $FOO spend time boosting their PoV/wishes/hopes on a forum. It's quite another when they have to put their money where their mouth is: then they are open to new information!

[wat10000]

They’re not betting on when, they’re betting on if with a time limit.

[WJW]

> I dunno how to reply to this - that is exactly my point, but it appears (to me, anyway) that you are saying this in disagreement?

Yes. The research shows that they do (almost) always converge, but that they DON'T always converge to an accurate value. In particular, there can be behavioral biases at work that warp the perception of bettors in one direction or the other. A well documented case of this is when fans of a sports team pile in and bet for their favorite team, causing the price to shift too much towards the more popular team. Exposure to the predictions by other bettors then causes the total market to converge to the biased price. Interestingly enough, people still do this even though this phenomenon is well documented and they have to put their money on the line. People just don't care enough about their $10 bet to do thorough research.

In a similar way, I would not at all be surprised if some people are such fanboys of OpenAI that they start to display cultlike behavior. You can easily find such people online even on this very site. It's not such a weird thing to consider that people at the peak of a hype cycle don't always behave in rational ways, especially when they're just betting $10 when drunk on a Saturday evening.