Ah, gambling. Taking advantage of people who don’t understand math since, well, forever.
My late father-in-law was a civil engineer who helped design the streetlight system in Las Vegas. His job entailed staying in a hotel across from one of the big casinos during the week.
He told this great anti-gambling cautionary tale about how every day, he’d watch the armored truck pull up at the casino and the guards would wheel out the money and put it in the armored truck. He said in all the time he was there, he never once saw them take money INTO the casino.
There’s a lesson there about gambling, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
That is a great antedote. What makes these prediction markets so terrible is that sportsbooks are already bad enough! Lines are configured so that even if you win occasionally, you're guaranteed to lose in the long term. Prediction Markets take that model and make it worse by removing limited gambler protections and adding a deceptive user experience.
Oh what do you know, Substack is doing something shady and shitty!!!! Shocker :/ BTW I moved my publication over to Beehiiv, happy to share insights with anyone who wants to leave Substack.
It seems like you're one of many who are viewing this as the final straw. Which is such a shame. They're driving away good writers to make a quick buck.
This explicit alignment of the platform with Polymarket is plenty bad enough without the disingenuous bullshit explanation that it's being done because it's some sort of tool for "leveling the playing field" for 'jounalusts' or anyone else. Journalists shouldn't be wagering on the events they cover for pretty obvious reasons. Beyond that the information about how others are wagering on events doesn't provide insight into anything larger about those events. The endorsement and encouragement to wager on anything and everything constantly to monetize it is so incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. I think it's pretty safe to say that Substack is interested in making money. It was never about writing, ideas, or any higher principle. It never is.
You're spot on. A betting market doesn't show the probability of an event. It shows how much people are betting on an event. Those are correlated, but they're not direct cause-and-effect. There's no journalistic use here!
Ah, gambling. Taking advantage of people who don’t understand math since, well, forever.
My late father-in-law was a civil engineer who helped design the streetlight system in Las Vegas. His job entailed staying in a hotel across from one of the big casinos during the week.
He told this great anti-gambling cautionary tale about how every day, he’d watch the armored truck pull up at the casino and the guards would wheel out the money and put it in the armored truck. He said in all the time he was there, he never once saw them take money INTO the casino.
There’s a lesson there about gambling, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
That is a great antedote. What makes these prediction markets so terrible is that sportsbooks are already bad enough! Lines are configured so that even if you win occasionally, you're guaranteed to lose in the long term. Prediction Markets take that model and make it worse by removing limited gambler protections and adding a deceptive user experience.
Oh what do you know, Substack is doing something shady and shitty!!!! Shocker :/ BTW I moved my publication over to Beehiiv, happy to share insights with anyone who wants to leave Substack.
It seems like you're one of many who are viewing this as the final straw. Which is such a shame. They're driving away good writers to make a quick buck.
This explicit alignment of the platform with Polymarket is plenty bad enough without the disingenuous bullshit explanation that it's being done because it's some sort of tool for "leveling the playing field" for 'jounalusts' or anyone else. Journalists shouldn't be wagering on the events they cover for pretty obvious reasons. Beyond that the information about how others are wagering on events doesn't provide insight into anything larger about those events. The endorsement and encouragement to wager on anything and everything constantly to monetize it is so incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. I think it's pretty safe to say that Substack is interested in making money. It was never about writing, ideas, or any higher principle. It never is.
You're spot on. A betting market doesn't show the probability of an event. It shows how much people are betting on an event. Those are correlated, but they're not direct cause-and-effect. There's no journalistic use here!