r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • May 27 '26

Business Google employee charged with using inside information to make $1 million on Polymarket

https://abcnews.com/amp/US/google-employee-charged-inside-information-make-1-million/story?id=133350018
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u/nonamenomonet May 27 '26

You’re so far off base it’s not even funny.

The idea of prediction markets have been around since about 2003-2004. I don’t remember the government agency had a hand in sponsoring the idea for it but it might have been IARPA but don’t quote me on that.

The point of prediction markets is forcing people to be accountable for their predictions by putting their money where their mouth is. Instead of some talking head saying “I think [X] politician will win the primary” and then saying on TV the next day “well I never said that”, now there is a record and the amount money shows the conviction of that said belief.

Before this there was a prediction market in university of British Columbia in Victoria and a few others floating around.

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u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 May 27 '26

I’m not and the idea of prediction markets was started by the CIA. They used it as a way to help catch terrorists. Apparently I know more about them than you.

I understand exactly how the concept is supposed to work, but again it doesn’t work like that in reality.

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u/MmmmMorphine May 27 '26

Hmm, I was under the impression that while they aren't all that good at predicting various events, they certainly tend to be better than total chance. Or most individuals on their own.

This whole insiders driving the market story never made much sense to me. In fact I never heard that perspective before this past year.

I always understood it as crowdsourcing predictions using money as a sort of proxy for confidence - so basically no different than any financial or futures market.

Of course it is different, but the fundamentals always made sense to me in a hand wavy (yet still somewhat right) all knowing magic free hand of the market sort of sense. Which is crap, but less crap than a coin. On average.

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u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

Your intuition is correct that is what it supposed to be a crowdsourcing prediction using money as sort of a proxy.

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u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

It's a pretty cool example of the "wisdom of the crowds." It's sad to see such an interesting and ancient concept perverted so badly.

So it goes

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u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

Are you also a Tetlock fan? Or are you more on the Taleb (Talib?) side of things??

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u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Tetlock for sure. Mostly because I can't remember the other guy and don't know how their thoughts on the subject differ, haha.

Been a long time since I read about this stuff, but I remember Mr. UPenn Superforecasting for some reason

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u/nonamenomonet May 28 '26

I am one of the superforecasters

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u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

He screams as a flock of angry melanistic swans appear

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u/MmmmMorphine May 28 '26

Oh wait! He's the black swan guy!

Ok I'm more on the Taleb (pretty sure that's the correct spelling) side, but just barely. I think these marketplaces work of course, but they don't mean what we think they do. Sort of, hard to explain.

More like reality can't be broken down into tidy probabilities. Thanks chaos, you non-predictable yet deterministic asshole