Scott Alexander

they might still be more likely to vote Republican based on their own private economic optimism, and then the hidden goodness of the economy might become manifest and improve GDP during the next term.

Yes, this example is a stretch.

Maybe I'm missing better ones.

Or maybe this is a silly edge case failure mode that shouldn't bother us in real life.

What about interaction effects?

For example, if Democrats were better at milking a good economy and making it even better, but Republicans were better at correcting a distressed economy and bringing it back to average, would that break the link between the primary and secondary markets?

This is beyond my poor mathematical ability, but the AIs claim it's not a problem.

The secondary market workaround still ensures the correct difference.

Bonus question, is there a way to simplify this so that we don't have to run all four markets?

The end of the beginning.

When I started this column in 2021, I dreamed of a time when there would be big legal prediction markets on important topics.

That's come true.

There have been some small benefits, but not the epistemic wonderland I hoped for.

So what now?

Do we pat Shane Coplin and Tarek Mansour on the back, let them enjoy their superyachts and otherwise forget about this space?

I see two ways forward.

The first is to continue praying for the original manifold vision, a prediction market site which offers, one, real money markets, two, that are user-created, user-resolved, and potentially subjective, giving the user a percent of the volume as a reward for writing or managing or promoting the question, and three, and are otherwise easy to use.

Good interface, high volume, legal in the US.

I've been asking this for so long that Nuno Sempere dubbed it the Siskind cube.

So here's a picture of a cube.