Why do I keep seeing people putting stock in “betting markets”? … Somehow professional gamblers became respected replacements for polls some and I do not get it
I think the justification is that people will be more honest/rational when betting their own money.
It’s probably less irrational than stock markets, since there’s a very clear time horizon people are betting on, and data like polls can be pretty good. But since they’re looking at essentially the same data as pundits, it’s unsurprising they tend to do about as well.
It’s real easy to make polls go whichever way you like if you try and it may be in someoned best interest to make sure only the ‘correct’ polls are widely known. We’re spoiled in that we’ve been able to expect the organizations involved to be trustworthy and not do that, but I think a lot of us feel that that’s been less and less true.
For the betting markets, their success relies almost solely on them predicting odds correctly and consistently. Our respect here is for the people who dedicate their lives to making sure the gamblers lose. Could obviously still be manipulated, but in this case doing so is at least contrary to the purpose of the organization instead of in the previous case potentially actually supporting it…
Not going to lie though, is a weird shift, I get it.
Why do I keep seeing people putting stock in “betting markets”? … Somehow professional gamblers became respected replacements for polls some and I do not get it
I think the justification is that people will be more honest/rational when betting their own money.
It’s probably less irrational than stock markets, since there’s a very clear time horizon people are betting on, and data like polls can be pretty good. But since they’re looking at essentially the same data as pundits, it’s unsurprising they tend to do about as well.
It’s real easy to make polls go whichever way you like if you try and it may be in someoned best interest to make sure only the ‘correct’ polls are widely known. We’re spoiled in that we’ve been able to expect the organizations involved to be trustworthy and not do that, but I think a lot of us feel that that’s been less and less true.
For the betting markets, their success relies almost solely on them predicting odds correctly and consistently. Our respect here is for the people who dedicate their lives to making sure the gamblers lose. Could obviously still be manipulated, but in this case doing so is at least contrary to the purpose of the organization instead of in the previous case potentially actually supporting it…
Not going to lie though, is a weird shift, I get it.