I've spent years watching prediction markets and finding them to be, by a wide margin, the most accurate way for me to understand the world. It is not remotely close.
It sucks that they're going mainstream, providing incentives to bad actors to profit from their power, and it sucks that they've gone so heavily for the predatory gambling market to boot.
> the most accurate way for me to understand the world
Are you sure it's not survivorship bias or similar? I've seen multiple trend lines that are very confident only to switch to the opposite outcome at the very end.
Are you sure you're not the one seeing the survivorship bias? Something that is 10% likely to happen ends up switching to the opposite outcome at the very end 1/10 times. There are thousands of prediction markets up at any given time, so there are going to be plenty of examples of unlikely events happening.
Prediction markets, like many other micro-financialization trends, is unhealthy for society. I'm not going to trust research from the very company selling the product. History provides ample examples of how that works without the need to gamble on it.
I would invite you to look into the statistics on foreclosures, bankruptcy, and gambling hotline traffic which compare jurisdictions that have allowed this stuff vs not. Those with demographic breakdowns help to show those most at risk.
Polymarket has $5 million of wagers on "Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of April?"
The toll Iran charges for safe passage is $2 million per ship, and at current prices such a ship would be carrying about $200 million of oil. Oh, and we live in a world where a single billionaire will happily spend $200 million to influence politics.
The polymarket number merely shows that nobody's paid to make it higher or lower yet.
