It sounds like they should be called "indicator markets" rather than "prediction markets", as the data shows they largely just summarize the current knowledge, with little predictive ability.
Sort of. Putting current knowledge into a number can be pretty interesting / useful though. Like many people, I read headlines and pay attention to what's happening in international politics, but from those it's hard to have any sense of how much reality there is to bluster in Iran/Panama/Venezuela/Greenland just from general discourse and media. For me, prediction markets have been very helpful in offering some sort of grounding beyond the general noise in areas where I have very little intuition or realistic sense of the possibilities.
I don't understand the distinction you are making.
Obviously they are based on current knowledge. Nobody has any actual crystal ball.
But the outcomes are with regard to future events. So the correct term is predictions.
And they don't "just summarize the current knowledge". The whole point is that they better reflect the knowledge of people who presumably know better because they are willing to put their money where their mouth is, and ignore the vast majority of nonsense. That's not summarization. That's judgment. That's the whole point.
My sense is that, for prediction markets to work, there needs to be some real knowledge/analysis/judgement spread across at least a material subset of participants. Simply aggregating random guesses is likely no better than any given random guess.
Put another way there needs to be SOME signal buried in all the noise.
And there is. That's why they work. Prediction markets are not simply aggregating random guesses. Were you somehow under the impression that they were?
Not at all. Just saying that there needs to be knowledge/expertise/experience/etc. of some sort embedded beyond just a lot of people making random guesses and I’m not sure that wisdom of crowds always captures that.
But there is, that's the whole point. The more correct and better information you have, the more incentivized you are monetarily to place a wager that will pay off. And the more incentivized you are to place a much larger wager.
Meanwhile, people just making random guesses are more likely to be placing small wagers that are also just canceling each other out.
So the knowledge, expertise, experience that you are talking about is absolutely embedded into this. That is the whole point.
>as the data shows they largely just summarize the current knowledge, with little predictive ability.
What counts as "little predictive ability"? Do weather forecasts count as "predictions", or are they "indicators" too? Sure, they might have a more consistent track record, but then again weather is less susceptible to human interference than whatever happens in geopolitics within the next year. Prognostications about future climate might be less reliable, do those have to be downgraded to "indicators" too? On the flip side, prediction markets have a very good track record when forecasting certain events, such as interest rate decisions. Does that mean whether it's a "prediction" or a "indicator" depends on what you're forecasting?
It was a finite element simulation of a CT-scanned violin, but as they note,
“If there’s anything that’s sounding mechanical to it, it’s because we’re using the exact same time function, or standard way of plucking, for each note,” says Makris, who is himself a lute player. “A musician will adapt the way they’re plucking, to put a little more feeling on certain notes than others. But there could be subtleties which we could incorporate and refine.”
In addition, the resonant characteristics of the bow also contributes significantly to the sound, as it feeds directly back to the stick-slip contact that is more akin to a mode-locked laser’s nonlinear dynamics. The violin body’s resonant characteristics in comparison is more like a passive filter.
Reusable rockets started with DC-X. SpaceX's first contract was for DARPA's FALCON Project (predates their rocket name). They're not exactly hiding intentions.
It goes a lot deeper than that. The inventor of space-based interceptors actually traveled to Russia with Musk in 2001 and they formed SpaceX on the flight home
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