[ExI] roaring twenties

[Adrian Tymes]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2026 at 5:58 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> Then there's a section on "Prediction Markets vs Polls" which fails to point out that polls give information on who people /want/ to win (not, as it says, what they think will happen. Very few people will honestly answer that, because we all know that surrounding opinions sway people's decisions. If you think that A will probably win, but you would prefer B to win, you'll say that you think B will win. It's a form of propaganda. Everyone does it, not just governments), but a prediction market claims to be able to predict who will win. Totally different things, apples vs. oranges. You can't compare them.
>
> Nobody knows what will happen, all anybody knows is what they want to happen. What they /think/ will happen is irrelevant, and probably impossible to untangle from what they want. Really, there's no such think as what you think will happen, just what you hope and what you fear.

The idea, as I understand it, is twofold:

1) Absent any expert method of prediction, if you poll a lot of people
- and place money on it, so they actually think about it for a moment
- then the consensus majority preferred outcome is the most likely to
happen, especially when it comes to things like election results (most
people presumably vote for the outcome they want).

2) Where there are expert methods of prediction, the experts will use
this to get paid a little extra, and will naturally come to dominate
the market.  You don't have to specifically pay them for their
expertise; they're already being paid, and their expertise becomes
available this way.

Again: that's how I understand the idea is proposed to work, without
any comment on how (and/or if) it actually does work, let alone work
in those specific ways.