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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   30739 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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The desparation of groups to see a mass-murderer wind up belonging to the other tribe inspired me to dream up a mobile app that you could use whenever such an event was occuring live. It would allow you to bet on the identity and motivation of the perpetrators of mass murder events while they are breaking news. The odds would be based on collating data from every media headline atrocity that has occurred in the past 20 years. Imagine the odds on this guy.

Some might call it crude, but I would argue that this is no worse than the wink nudging that occurs on reddit or twitter whenever such an attack occurs.

Years ago I had an idea for a goofy story concerning two characters independently plotting mass shootings in the US. The first character is a misogynistic incel who wants revenge against the Stacies and roasties who've rejected him all his life in favour of Chads. The second character is an Islamic fundamentalist who believes the West is fundamentally, irreparably rotten and degenerate, and the only thing that can save it is the immediate imposition of an Islamic theocracy.

All the logistics and planning for the two mass shootings are ironed out. There's just one problem. The first protagonist is of Arab descent and is named Muhammad Assan: he's savvy enough to realise that, even if he publishes a manifesto long enough to rival Elliot Rodger's, the motivation for his mass shooting will be attributed to Islamism (even though he himself is an atheist) purely on the strength of his name and ethnic background. The second protagonist, meanwhile, is of Chechen descent, is named Adam Abubakarov, only became a zealous Islamic convert in college, and is ambiguously Slavic enough to scan as "white": even if he screams "Allahu akbar!" before commencing his rampage, he realises that his name and skin colour means that his rampage will be assumed to have been motivated by far-right extremism, hatred of women, James Holmes-esque psychosis or similar; his religious beliefs will be a footnote at best. So both would-be murderers are stymied by how to ensure that the underlying messages for their respective rampages are interpreted as intended.

The solution? It's 70 years old and no less effective for it: they'll swap rampages. Adam will publish Muhammad's manifesto under his own name immediately before shooting up a sorority house, and Muhammad will blow up a synagogue immediately after distributing pamphlets containing passages from the Qur'an.

TBH I'd read it.

“We did it, reddit!”

Great idea, but if you think "suspect was known to the FBI" is bad, wait till you see the insider trading schemes for MurderBets.io.

It's a good thing that the Prediction Market Act of 2036 mandated that 10% of the bet volume goes towards life insurance of the target, and that he gets the full volume in the event he kills the assassin.

However the CCTV companies seem to be the happiest with the outcome, as they win no matter who loses.

I was thinking recently about assassination markets, and how the state would try to curtail those.

Couldn't they outlaw making bets and trades that pay off when "someone dies"? The idea is that allowing those markets sets perverse incentives -- namely, to kill the individual in question. Or maybe this legislation couldn't work because of a loophole that would let assassin markets run under the guise of life insurance?

It seems to me regular markets already have that incentive structure, at least for the set of people whose sudden unexpected death would have a predictable effect on the market. Assassination markets are kind of a distilled version of buying leveraged stock in an industry and murdering a politician who is angling to regulate it. Which ties into the old idea that having wealthy enemies is dangerous.

Wouldn't an assassination market be censorship resistant as a matter of course?

Couldn't they outlaw making bets and trades that pay off when "someone dies"?

Outlawing the entire life insurance industry?

An exception can be made for betting own your own death (and naming the people who benefit). Since you can't personally benefit from the payout after you're dead, and can choose who you trust enough not to murder you for money, this is a reasonable exception as the main issue doesn't apply.

Easier just to jail anyone who suggests it too stridently

Combining prediction markets and trial by combat? A man after my own heart...

Problem is adjudicating afterwards.

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