I think you're greatly overestimating liquidity on Manifold. I made this market about government shutdown effects on the stockmarket, and barely anyone traded and it was still at 46% even after the outcome was already publicly known.

I really liked what Dylan said about Samotsvety being named as "senior researchers" at Forecasting Research Institute to make it easier for him to reference and get past his editors. Likewise if eg. X reputable company made and controlled a market on Manifold it could be referenced as "X reputable company's market says there are these odds..."

Wonder if there are any practical implications of that with Manifold. Maybe we should be reaching out to reputable places and asking them to make markets with the hopes that other people would then be more willing to cite and share them 🤔

What on people's thoughts on prediction markets needing to make it into mainstream journalism and media?

While I do think it is one way to grow to more mainstream audiences, is it actually what we should be focusing on? On one hand I could see spending several hours a day collecting markets as a story and sending them to journalists and building connections. But on the other news is becoming increasingly decentralised and fragmented across Twitter and TikTok and so maybe we should just not focus on journalism.

Also, the world I see markets in news articles is being referenced as a number. Maybeee they include the graph, but they might not. Does that actually drive traffic to prediction markets sites? I don't know that it does which is a problem because I feel like markets are still at a stage where we do need more traders, liquidity and traffic for news to be able to frequently reference it.

This was really good! Sad I missed it in person to bet on people wrestling with Aella in the park, but glad it was recorded!

Main takeaways:

• Progress is definitely being made in including PMs in journalism, I feel like throughout this conversation I could see the cracks in the dam. Maybe most people don't want super detailed forecasts in their news, but I think there's a lot of demand that isn't being met right now. I hope things go well for the Base Rate Times.

• @DylanMatthews is very entertaining and knows a lot more about PMs than any our journalist I can think of! I hope he does more podcasts, we haven't had a Future Perfect episode in too long.

• @ScottAlexander has the true heart of a Manifold user and I will be buying some yes in /ScroogeMcDuck/will-austin-chen-manifold-cofounder to show my support for his bold prediction. No doubt he will be vindicated in due time.