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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Lets explore Polymarket and what bets are the best choice to make money in this election. You can bring alternative platforms if you want.

This post is not advice, just some ideas. I write this here because I am curious if I see multiple people who find a particular example to seem like an opportunity. I recall reading that only 12.7% of people who have used Polymarket have had positive returns. https://www.bitcoinsensus.com/news/polymarket-only-12-of-users-achieve-profits/

So, I am not encouraging anyone to bet money and to use this platform. Statistically, it is is a bad idea for most people.

In addition to the political element, the culture war element can be using politically incorrect knowledge to gain an edge.

Lets start with the sure ones: https://polymarket.com/event/california-presidential-election-winner

Black voters for Trump https://polymarket.com/event/trump-increase-share-of-black-voters

If Trump gets 13% of greater black votes at 21.95% return.

https://polymarket.com/event/will-trump-win-30-or-more-of-black-men?tid=1730390110917

Trump not getting 30% of black men at 23.45% return.

So which of the two is more likely? Seems that both are likely, but based on the sentiment and polling, Trump will increase his share of black voters.

Similar questions about women

https://polymarket.com/event/will-kamala-win-60-or-more-of-women

Only 14% choose this when Biden won 57% of women. Seems to be undercounted.

This one is with the cat lady picture

https://polymarket.com/event/will-kamala-do-better-than-biden-with-unmarried-women

Seems a likely yes with 31.57% return

https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-win-white-women

White women question. Trump won with white women vs both Biden and Clinton. This gives a bigger return, with bigger uncertainty. However, now there is Roe v Wade as a factor.

I am not going to explore the question of who gets elected as there is too much uncertainty and also I wonder if there is any possibility of ballot harvesting and fraud. And here is the Israel question.

https://polymarket.com/event/us-arms-embargo-on-israel-in-2024?tid=1730390749663

This one is until end of 2024.

Considering how powerful the Jewish lobby is in the USA, to put it in more politically correct terms, I find an arms embargo from the USA towards Israel as highly unlikely. However, the people who wrote this question are sneaky and offered this as sufficient for it to be yes: A limited embargo, restricting only certain categories of military equipment, will qualify for a "Yes" resolution.

This is a pattern with various questions, asking something that the expected answer would be X, but when clicking it, it gives a loophole where it becomes yes under less stringent requirements.

Like this example:

https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-us-confirm-that-aliens-exist-in-2024?tid=1730391254453

This market will resolve to "Yes" if the President of the United States, any member of the Cabinet of the United States, any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any US federal agency definitively states that extraterrestrial life or technology exists by December 31, 2024, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".

A member of the cabinet claiming this is not sufficient to be a genuine confirmation! Even that is still highly unlikely, of course.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't betting on winning/losing demographic groups just a bet on exit polling? Or will it resolve based on county/precinct level voting data correlated across the country?

It just feels like betting on an NFL players PFF grade.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't betting on winning/losing demographic groups just a bet on exit polling? Or will it resolve based on county/precinct level voting data correlated across the country?

Correct.

It just feels like betting on an NFL players PFF grade.

Depending on the question, some questions are more predictable than how players are rated because even good players have bad matches, and even a rare bad year, while some scenarios are more likely than that. I am not sure if PFF grade is about how an NFL player is rated over the year.

I have no idea about anything NFL related so I would never even consider betting anything on it but I have some knowledge about politics. Seems that 30% of black men voting for Trump, isn't that likely.

Same with Harris increasing the % of unmarried women over Biden after roe vs wade which has a 79% for yes but actually gives 22.55% return.

Sport results can be more unpredictable than some scenarios about what will happen.

But this is indeed gambling, and it there are comparisons to be made with betting on sports. It even has an option for sports betting. Since most people using the platform lose money, I am not going to counter too much your skepticism. Most questions are going to involve things that aren't predictable. The most predictable possible choices give little return. And if you think that something is predictable while it gives a decent return, you might be missing something. But markets aren't perfect, and people might be underestimating how likely something is too.

Sorry, should have explained more.

PFF is a company that puts together a numerical grade indicating the performance of every player based on experts subjective viewing of each game. It is meant to bridge the gap between the mostly objective stats (the QB threw the ball for X yards, the LB made Y tackles) and the totally subjective eye test which fans can only apply while watching the game, and even then only to players they pay attention to. PFF grades are meant to capture things like "the linebacker didn't make the tackle, but he filled the A gap forcing the running back to cut back and get tackled for a loss." It's a tool used to compare players, based on expert opinions.

If one bets on the outcome of an NFL game, one is mostly safe from match fixing short of a real serious operation, because the stakeholders all value the outcome of the game greatly, and the product is visible on the field so there's a good chance people might pick up on obvious point shaving over time. Betting on an objective stats, like catches or yards or sacks, is riskier for point shaving because it's somewhat possible for a team to force or allow certain statistical outcomes to occur without impacting the outcome of the game.

But betting on PFF grades, you have no protection against PFF just getting the grade wrong. Or theoretically of PFF just fixing the result. And certainly not from PFF being biased, liking the vibes of one player instead of another.

In the same way, when you bet on Trump winning 30% of black voters, you're betting on an exit poll showing that Trump got 30% of the black vote. Especially when you get deep into smaller samples like minority vote count. So much depends on the pollsters secret sauce, how they weight different sample sizes to balance it towards what they think the truth looks like. You have no protection from the pollster making an error, or just shrugging and saying "idk maybe it's an outlier."

Now probably the market for those bets is small enough that it won't matter, it won't make sense to put the fix in. But it wouldn't be hard to do, and the bettor would have zero protection against it.

I have a very good record of betting on prediciton markets and crypto. Turned an ~70K bankroll into a few million. That is not some Lebron level performance but its very good in my opinion. The motte isn't going to want to hear this but...

'Things the right wants to be true' are systematically overpriced. This has been true for years and it is probably still true this cycle. That doesn't mean Trump wont win or wont win in a landslide. But systematically the 'pro-rightwing' outcomes tend to be overpriced. I would not place a bet on any outcome where Trump wins unless you have a very good reason. I think trump is favored but the bets tend to be overpriced.

I will say there is one piece of counterevidence recently that seems important to my personal estimation. Prediction markets were way ahead of other sources in predicting that Joe Biden would step down. Places like Metaculus which are usually reasonably trustworthy (despite minimal monetary incentives) were hilariously overconfident. But I am skeptical of most 'trump wins X' bets from a financial point of view.

Yeah this is a fairly accurate take, although I also made a good amount of money (nowhere near your bankroll, natch) betting on Trump in '16 when his odds were extremely undervalued, both in the primary and the general, up until the last couple months

May I ask what gives you confidence on where crypto is headed? What sort of bets did you make?

Mostly technical details. Things like firedancer, the new solana validator client.

Hm. I wish you'd elaborate more.

that's impressive. are you actively trading crypto, or just HODLing it? It seems hard to make large amounts on prediction markets, no matter how good you are, because they're just too thinly traded and have too much of a spread/withdrawal fees.

The crypto election markets (ie polymarket) dont have those problems. You can bet millions without changing the odds too much (assuming you spread your bets out a little). Spread and withdrawal fees are very small. You are probably thinking of the situation with predictit which did have all those issues.

Note: I specifically do mean election markets. Elections, especially presidential elections, have by far the most liquidity. But you can bet tens or low hundreds of thousands of dollars on all sorts of markets. Liquidity varies but many markets have decent liquidity.

But doesnt that require you to have some special insight about elections? I agree with nate silver, this election is too close to call and i have no idea what will happen. I certainly wouldn't want to wager millions of dollars on it. If you have some special insight, you could probably becone a celebrity forecaster like nate silver and make more that way.

You need correct insight not special insight. Many rationalists made a lot more money than I did with the simple insight of 'AI progress will be rapid, buy nvidia'. I made a little off that insight but got into the game too late and was too diversified into shitty AI companies.

What is your general strategy for making money on prediction markets and crypto?

Don't use leverage. Don't make a trade unless you think you have a huge edge.

Trump on polymarket has fallen by around 5 points today. I don't follow US politics closely and I don't know what has changed. Perhaps the accusations of market manipulation had something to them? The needle on polymarket was always higher than on other prediction sites.

I'm not going to bet on polymarket myself. I can't foresee a situation where my advantage in some kind of knowledge/prediction skills would be enough to ever make up for the extant pricing due to others betting, and the cut that the site takes. It seems like a "house (nearly) always wins" situation.

CNN just hot-dropped multiple battleground state polls showing Harris with a +6 lead.

Since polymarket mostly trails polls, it makes sense.

We’ve actually seen Polymarket front run the polls; not the other way around. My guess is there was a reaction to that polling but many other polls came out at the same time with Trump leading so hard to make heads or tails.

I'm pretty sure those are outliers. At least, if you subtract the partisan reasoning, the entire industry is converging on even stevens. If Harris was suddenly doing landslide numbers it'd have been factored in already, no?

I placed a fairly large bet on Kamala Harris to win at 33.3%. Trump is maybe slightly favored but seems close to a tossup to me.

I think 67/33 doesn’t make sense but 60/40 seems right. If the polls corrected the Trump hate of 2016/20, then it seems like a close race with Trump with an edge. If they didn’t correct the bias, then Trump landslide. If they overcorrected, then Harris with an edge.

Hence 60/40

60/40 would also easily justify a big bet at 33.3%. I have a long history of uhhhh gambling/speculative investment. I try to only place bets if there is a lot of extra room for me to be wrong and still have positive EV. Harris at 33.3% just seemed like a great buy.

Yeah agreed. To me polymarket seemed a bit too bullish on Trump. Again, I think Trump is the comfortable favorite but wouldn’t be shocking for Harris to win.