Polymarket, the hyperstition market

drnick

@DrNickA

It’s possible. A post on prediction markets and elections.

It’s well established that one of the biggest contributors to election victories is polls.

People like to vote with the crowd, effectively outsourcing their decision making to others. This is the “bandwagon effect”.…

Santiago R Santos | #9159

@santiagoroel

What are the odds political campaigns are pumping prediction markets?

Doesn’t take much $ to move odds in your favor in Polymarket and if you think that drives votes then…

2

11:56 AM • Aug 12, 2024

Polymarket has achieved crypto escape velocity, launching into the mainstream as an accurate source of odds for the 2024 US presidential election.

Hyperstition: a self-fulfilling prophecy, an idea or belief that brings about its own reality through people believing in it.

Polymarket aims to accurately reflect probabilities, but it could affect the probability as well. There's an argument to be made here that Polymarket is a form of hyperstition, and it goes:

1. People want to vote with the crowd (bandwagon effect)

2. Polymarket odds are trustworthy, and most importantly mainstream

3. People vote, influenced by Polymarket odds

This would mean that manipulating Polymarket's odds would also result in the election odds changing, resulting in those manipulated odds becoming the true ones.

Quantifying betting markets' effect on the events they bet on is left as an exercise to the reader.