Paging Jim Bell

Mirimir mirimir at riseup.net
Fri Jul 27 08:36:38 PDT 2018


On 07/25/2018 10:34 AM, jim bell wrote:
>  Ah yes, excellent point, and quite true.   I'd forgotten...   Which is one reason this new system (I haven't looked at it yet) might not "work", at least it won't bring us an AP-type system.   If the question is, "Will [fill in the blank with a name] be alive at the end of the year 2018?", then everybody who bets "No" is essentially on the same footing.  They'd all share, proportionately, in the reward.   A person who predicted death before 2019 is on the same footing as everyone else who made the same prediction.  Thus, there is little incentive to "adjust the odds"acting outside of the game.  

OK, so the prediction is "dead by 2019-01-01 00:00:00.000000000-00:00".
By late 2018, the odds against that are ramping up. And so is the
security level, I suppose. But anyway, at some time, the assassin (or
whoever's in control) places a huge bet. And watches the odds, and
monitors security etc. Then the assassin completes the job, and wins
big. Unless captured or killed, of course. Others who didn't fold also
win big, but hey.

> If, instead, the system is designed to allow bettors to 'predict' the date and perhaps even the time of the death, that system carefully excludes most other 'competing' bettors:  If one bettor predicted December 1, and another predicted December 3, if the actual death occurred on December 1 all other bettors would lose the 'pot', and only those who predicted December 1 would share the 'pot'.   This greatly leverages the betting.  Which is why death-on-a-certain-date was my intended model when I wrote AP.

That also works. But much better is Steven Schear's proposal (next post
in thread) to encrypt more-or-less exact predictions, with leverage
depending on precision of the prediction. That mitigates against
increasing security when nearing the end of the prediction period.

>                Jim Bell
> 
>     On Wednesday, July 25, 2018, 9:54:13 AM PDT, Steven Schear <schear.steve at gmail.com> wrote:  
>  
>  Another practical requirement is leveraged betting. This enables those intending to act outside of these online venues but with limited financial means to wager in such ways as their payouts are greatly disproportionate to their wagers.

<SNIP>


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