According to credible polls after the debate - if 538 commissions a poll, this market will resolve to the result. If no 538 poll runs, I will resolve this market to an equally credible source.
🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
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| 5 | Ṁ2,620 |
Harris is officially the Presidential nominee, so I'm resolving this as "the debate will not happen".
if, for some random fluke and entirely unexpected reason Vance becomes the Presidential nominee and debates Harris, I'll re-resolve, but I feel comfortable enough resolving now and freeing up everyone's mana.
I know it may be frustrating for some holders here that this market remains open but until Harris is confirmed the D Pres nominee it's still possible.
Given the scenarios Ben mentions, I'll clarify that: I won't hold out for a Trump incapacitation between now and election day but I'll resolve when there's a debate between Vance and the D VP nom as I think that's a fair marker for the next debate not being with Kamala and the market was based on the VP debate being Harris v. Vance.
why is “Debate between Harris and Vance does not happen“ an option? That’s outside the context of the conditional?
seems like a big oversight is manifold just entirely broken for conditional probabilities?
sorry, struck the tag if that matters. my complaint was with the ability to N/A a market and not with your setup. assumed the reason was related to manifold capabilities.
anyway, my objection is that the utility of markets lies in the information they present. in this case, a question like “if the debate happens…” lets you explore the debate capabilities of individuals independent of the probability that it actually happens.
the market seems redundant if you just ignore the if. it’s mainly now a market asking will the debate happen which should just be a separate question. it’s actually the completely different than what the title implies.
I personally disagree. Manifold did remove the option for users to NA their own markets in anticipation of changing business models (Mods can do it unless it causes a trader to go into a negative balance in such case an Admin is required; notably I'm a Mod) but even so, NA for a market should be avoided where possible.
so far this market has 399 traders and NA would nullify the entire prediction, and could potentially send some traders into the red purely for not accounting for an outlier scenario. allowing space for this chance not only allows for a more rich and insightful prediction opportunity, but makes it spicier because we're in such a state of flux that no one can be certain who will be the Dem VP nominee. I don't agree that this market is simply "will a VP v VP debate happen?" (though you're welcome to have a look at my other VP Debate questions - I have a couple more). there are three valid and viable outcomes listed here.
I do genuinely understand your perspective about wishing this market were more narrowly specific. I did consider the bigger picture and adding the third option wasn't done in haste.
thanks for taking the time to respond. honestly I don’t understand the underlying mechanics and what you mean by N/A leaving people in the red. I would want manifold to have an option for conditionals such that for P(A|B) if B never happens, literally nobody loses anything.
oc it’s on me for not considering that option 3 might have been intentional.
I would encourage different titles for similar markets in the future. ie given that a debate is possible, which of these is the most likely outcome? and list any number of options.
I think that my point still remains that the title very much implies what is P(A|B), and the actual options only yield P(A). and that’s not great.
I don’t understand what you mean by the options only yield P(A)? In this case P(Harris wins | they debate) is P(Harris wins) / P(they debate) which you can figure out from the probabilities shown in the market. I guess Manifold could do the math for you to make the conditional probability easier to see at a glance, but I think this is a great workaround to avoid N/A resolutions, which are kind of lame
I would want manifold to have an option for conditionals such that for P(A|B) if B never happens, literally nobody loses anything.
this would work in a vacuum but I don't think it's possible in an environment like this. if I imagine, say, a poker tournament where we all have the same buy in and we all play at the same table but agree that: if Tommy Eagle doesn't win the tournament, everyone gets their money back. it may be annoying for the winner if it's not Tommy but it does work - the chips go back to the house, everyone has their money returned, and we all walk away the same as we arrived.
here, you have scenarios where people can buy and sell their positions. if someone buys Yes or No on an option or options and sells at a profit, they obviously have more Mana than they started with and can take it to other markets to predict elsewhere. when a market NAs, it cancels all of the activity during its entire lifetime, which means returning Mana that people invested but also clawing back any profits. if a person has profited and reallocated so then doesn't have enough Mana in their balance to cover that clawback, it results in them going negative.
I think it's best we move any discussion about feature or functionality requests to somewhere other than the market to save the 400+ traders from the notifications unrelated to the question, but here's a recommended format for conditional markets to avoid NA:
condition met, outcome YES
condition met, outcome NO
condition not met
Not sure what the best place to put this is, but I also don't like the removal of the N/A option (and all the other changes recently: no loans, up to 7% vig, prize points (I don't understand/care how they work), etc. since they reduce the trade volume and therefore market efficiency)
I think all these changes are because mana are shifting away from play money to something more tangible so that's why people aren't allowed to go negative.
Ideally I'd prefer something like Metaculus where users can submit predictions as % and a conviction level (0.5x, 1x, 2x, etc.) and then their mana can be managed so that it is proportional to the conviction-weighted likelhood (see Kelly Criterion or essentially need to maximize the Utility which is weighted log(mana) ).
Then instead of fees I'd prefer a wealth tax (say 10% per year) which can be used to fund the site and for promotions that encourage trading.
Anyways, getting back to the topic (N/A resolutions), if a market is clear about when it will resolve as N/A I see no problem with it since traders know exactly what they're getting into and the risk of the market going void. For example, in sports gambling over/under and hypothetical markets can be void. There's less variance using N/A markets vs markets that are guaranteed to resolve, so they are less risky.
One alternative would be to resolve to a predefined probability like 50/50 (polymarket did this for the Elon/Zuck fight market), this is essentially equivalent to.
This allows the focus of the market to be on the binary outcome rather than whether the condition would be met.
Suggestions/Conclusions:
N/A markets are perfectly valid since they have less variance (in fact the variance is scaled by a factor of 1 minus the probability of resolving to N/A)
If the problem with N/A markets is that users can go negative, that's not a problem with N/A markets but rather wealth management strategies, that's why I suggested allowing users to more easily bet according to their convictions.
That's also why I don't like the up to 7% vig since it discourages users from liquidating their net worth, decreasing the flow of mana.
Instead I suggest, removing vig, bringing back no interest loans, just doing a flat wealth tax (for example Manifold could take 0.01% of all users wealth per day (roughly a 3.65% wealth tax per year) this has the added benefit of decaying the liquidity over time to ensure the market weighs more recent trading activity more heavily
thanks for the thorough comment - again, I don't want to turn this market into a suggestion box as all 400+ traders are getting comment notifications and we've gone off topic. just to reiterate, however:
NA is not available to users but is possible with Mod or Admin assistance
conditional markets that result in NA are sanctioned by Manifold staff these days, and I'm not sure how that will change once the shift to real money payouts occurs
having users go negative when real money is on the line is of greater consequence than with play money tokens like Mana for obvious reasons
I made the deliberate choice to include all resolution options to avoid an NA resolution, and this was a common approach even when NA was a more widely used/available option
I understand there are traders who would prefer to bet on a market that would be canceled if there isn't a debate; similarly there are traders who enjoy or even prefer to bet on a variety of outcomes, including the event not happening
I offer the #suggestions channel in the Manifold Discord server as a better and more effective place to make these (well stated!) suggestions, as they're more likely to be seen and addressed than here in a VP Debate market. someone can open a suggestion and everyone can make their case for what they see to be options for including NA as an option for market resolution in perpetuity.