[mwigdahl]

There's big money in it, so of course there's going to be a huge PR push to cast it as a great moral and societal good.

The thing that gets me is that the rationalists who were such outspoken proponents of prediction markets (look up "futarchy" and the many positive articles about it) failed to predict the astonishing amounts of corruption that have come along for the ride with them.

[atmavatar]

Strictly speaking, we cannot say for sure they didn't predict the corruption -- merely that they didn't warn about it.

For all we know, they're participating in the corruption, which is why they were outspoken proponents.

[LargeWu]

Of course they're participating, even driving it. Notably there were large bets placed predicting imminent military actions in Iran and Venezuela. In at least one case it was verifiably placed by one of the individuals planning it. We've reached the point where our country's leaders can profit not by the outcome of the war, but even just by the very act of initiating it.

[water-data-dude]

I was never rabid about it, but I thought prediction markets were a cool idea for a while. I didn't anticipate all of the crazy second order effects.

[totallyhuman]

Same here. I soured on it a bit when I noticed them becoming a bit of a rhetorical stick, "well if you think you're right, go place a bet!". I guess that's good if you want people to only make claims they seriously believe in, but it had a tendency to shut down discussion, and I feel like there's something valuable in being able to discuss and debate without the expectation that being right should be rewarded with money, and being wrong should be punished with same.

The negative second-order effects I expected were more about people concealing information and analysis that they otherwise would have shared, replacing complex but informative discussions with a black-box oracle. Boy was I wrong.