How will this resolve if private astronauts go along with an official mission? I'd think Yes, even though they're "carpooling"?

Why NASA specifically? I think China had some plans for manned missions, possibly.

• I assume this refers to new nasa astronauts (not those from original Apollo?)

• What if private astronauts go next but NASA doesn’t go within the next five years? In other words, can the private astronauts go too early for this market?

@Conflux 1)Yes, 2) I would resolve it to YES in that case

@Isaac228c So you're changing the question? That's a problem...

@Loop I made it less ambiguous, conveying the spirit of my thoughts better, making the outcome of a low probability event explicit

@Isaac228c What count is what is written, not the spirit of your thoughts. You changed the question after many people had already bet

This is a very low probability outcome, more of an edge case that does not meaningfully factor in to anyone's current predictions. Clarifying it now makes sure it's not an issue if we do run into the edge case later. I think it's perfectly acceptable for Isaac to clarify things this way after a comment asked for clarification.

@Mqrius It very much does factor in my predictions.

The issue is that it's not clarification, it's a change that goes against what was explicitly written in the title. Anyway I sold my position 2 months ago due to this

@Loop Fair enough, I guess your models are very different from mine. Do you have a market for it so I can bet against it?

@Mqrius To be clear, you believe the probability of private astronauts going before NASA astronauts is insignificant? As in not just small, but so small it can't affect this market by 1%?

@Loop I'd rate it as less than 5%, with wide uncertainty making it hard to be more confident right now. The wide uncertainty makes it impact this market less for me.

@Mqrius right, but then it isn't an edge case. I don't understand why large uncertainty gives it less rather than more impact for you, but then again maybe we just have different models.

What annoys my is the lack of acknowledgment that this is a bad thing to do in principle

@Loop It often happens that a new market is created, and edge cases are thought of where there's something ambiguous or unspecified. In those cases often a comment is written and the market creator specifies it.

In this case I would say the condition was ambiguous, because the literal interpretation of the title was against what you would reasonably assume the market to be about. A question was asked, and the edge case was specified. That seems like the proper procedure to me.

@Mqrius As for why the impact is small for me: when an event is far away, I might think it's 50% likely but I won't have a lot of confidence in the accuracy of that prediction. So I'd be fine with the market being at 40 or at 60, and might not move it to my exact credence if it's within those bounds. Small cases less than 5% likely wouldn't move it outside of the bounds where I feel like the probability is "more or less okay".

@Mqrius So you're assuming different norms of communication than I am.

You've been on manifold for longer than me, so maybe I'm wrong regarding what is the norm here, but if this is it it's a really bad norm... there is a reason every field that needs precise communication ends up adopting exact meanings. To think that 'literal interpretation' is a different thing from 'proper interpretation' makes things really subjective. You might think something is more reasonable, or an 'edge case even though it has up to 5% chance of happening(?)' etc; someone else might not. Case in point: I originally didn't in this market. It would be nice to not turn every market into 'guess what's in OP's head'.

As for the uncertainty I though yo were referring to the x<5% event (since at least to me fundamental uncertainty would pull credences toward 50%). If you mean this market then yeah it makes it less likely to affect bets

@Loop "It would be nice to not turn every market into 'guess what's in OP's head'."
I kind of agree in theory but in practice this is unavoidable on many markets. When I see a market, especially a new one, I try to think of all interpretations and edge cases, and I like to get them clarified before I make big bets in it.

For this market, it seems plausible that the alternative case wasn't properly considered by the author, so Conflux made sure what interpretation was relevant by asking in a comment. There might have been a literal interpretation of the market with an answer, but it was plausible enough that the author had something else in mind that asking was worth it before betting on it. The author is the final arbiter on what they meant, so it's part of the betting process to figure out what they mean.

It's quite hard for a single author to think of every "gotcha" beforehand, but with some comments and back-and-forths most markets get nicely specified. If something happens late in the market that wasn't forseen, the norm is usually that the market is declared N/A.

Personally, if an author doesn't properly specify their markets even after comments with questions, then I don't bet at all (and usually mute the author). It's a bit of a tradeoff in allowing everyone to make markets at will, you don't get perfect markets every time. But if they're happy answering questions then I'm happy helping to pin down all the edge cases :)