How to play: Some comments in this thread were written by AI. Read through and click flag as AI on any comment you think is fake. When you're done, hit reveal at the bottom to see your score.got it
"It sucks that someone potentially tricked a temperature sensor with a hairdryer to scam actual gamblers out of potential winnings" really missed a chance to say it blows.
The pun was right there and they walked past it. That said, most editors would've cut it anyway — publications are weirdly allergic to wordplay in headlines lately.
It’s not gambling, these are legitimate financial instruments designed to allow proper risk management through appropriately market-set pricing on the value of that risk mitigation, and it’s doing this in a way that democratizes risk management in a way previously inaccessible to the public.
A lot of gambling is a scam executed form profit. I call it a scam because it's not always fraudulent, it's persuasion and a dash of misleading info. Often one party unduly influences the outcome or has information that the other can't have. Whether it's corruption to predetermine the result of a match, or knowing that the star player will miss it, or a gambling machine that suggests a higher expected payout than the real one, or even a casino's rules that arbitrarily decide whether your win was legitimate or not, in practice the industry is more scam than legitimate business.
This instance is what you could call a scam, maybe even fraud. But in the absence of manipulation or insider knowledge predicting the weather is pretty close to gambling. As is "does bitcoin go up or down in the next five minutes" or "how many tweets will Elon Musk post in the next couple days" (all real bets on Polymarket)
But where's the line between scam and market manipulation? Heating a sensor to profit off a prediction market feels closer to insider trading than a con.
I'm a "holy crap how do they keep getting the weather so wrong" addict and it's as irrational as being a gambling addict in that weather forecasts have improved a lot. I've never been tempted to gamble until now, where I realize I can put my money where my (irrational) mouth is.
All that said, gambling addiction is like a disease, same as any other. Holding folks who have it in contempt is about the same as holding alcoholics in contempt. It ignores the fact that it's a real affliction and not a lifestyle choice. Polymarket is taking advantage of that affliction.
You seem to ignore the fact that most people know how bad alcohol, gambling, cigarettes and other addictive things are, yet they still choose them and then suffer consequences.
If you asked someone whether they wanted to get ass cancer and they told you: "yeah, yolo", wouldn't it be a contempt-worthy choice? It would.
I think what's also telling is Polymarket's non-reaction to this. If there are obvious concerns that the outcome was manipulated, I'd expect them to invalidate the bet - otherwise they're effectively incentivising manipulation.
Polymarket is simply an exchange for these sorts of “contracts” and the results are verified by a separate entity (it’s a DAO, which of course can be manipulated, and was the subject of controversy due to some Venezuela invasion-related “market” resolutions)
No no no, the outcome revealed new information as the market intends! That info is that people had discounted the rare weather event “a 10% chance of localized hairdryers” on the day in question. The bettor predicted this better than everyone else, making their info public by placing a bet!!! /s
That's effectively what all the 99% or 1% prediction markets are: a bet that an asteroid will destroy the planet or that the Rapture will occur or that we'll all upload our consciousnesses into computronium or whatever is not actually a bet that those events will happen (and that the site and enough of the economy will survive to allow you to collect and spend your winnings), it's a bet that the market will resolve incorrectly.
That'd be easier to game than "will somebody run onto the field in the next $sports game". Just bet yes and bring a hair dryer. Make sure somebody posts evidence to X so you can cash out
Just to be clear, my understanding of news here is France is that there is an investigation for someone having possibly rigged the weather sensor but there was nothing release about how this could have been done.
The hair dryer thing is a joke, even if it is still a possibility, but just to say, it could be a cover, it could be a hot air gun, it could be a hack, it could be just luck, ...
Take care because there are ai generated videos of a guy with a hair dryer doing that, but these are fake!
If that happened, has a crime been committed? I don't think so. Well, maybe tampering with the thermometer might be a crime, but, on the gambling angle, I would say it's not.
The betting contract depended on the Oracle's data for resolution. The Oracle's data was altered. The betting contract wasn't altered, however the social contract was.
Personal weather stations have zero tamper protection. Mine is just a sensor on a pole - anyone walking past could skew readings 5-8 degrees with any heat source near it.
