Talk:PredictionMarkets

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I was originally excited about prediction markets, but lost my excitement after I started looking at how they performed. I recall a widely touted election prediction that a market allegedly made. But that wasn't really a "pre-diction;" The market was very wrong most of the time. Yet this was touted as a success..?! It was only a couple weeks before the election, when everyone was realizing what was going on, and how things were, that the market reflected the winner. A nice way to get a number on public knowledge, but is it a method for predicting the future? I don't think so.

That said, if you're looking for supporting articles, here's one. -- LionKimbro

Ah; Here's an article on what I was talking about. -- LionKimbro

Lion, thanks for comment. I see Prediction markets as a possible tool. Maybe they need to be named something else, because I am not really thinking about using them as a "prediciton" tool, so much as a way to aggregate insights and knowledge based around a "bet". I think there is a lot of supporting data about how, in the case where knowledge about something is dispersed, that prediction markets perform well.

The example that Lion gives shows that in some cases, Prediction markets do not perform well until knowledge about the questions they are asking becomes available. In the case of the FundCamp process, I am seeing Prediction markets as one potential tool to make available to inform the overall, but not required (same with Consensus polling. However, it is recommended as a way to explore certain dimensions of a business, in the form of questions, etc, eg "Will this market last for longer than one year?", "Will this idea be displaced by the iPhone", etc

I want to set it up in the platform so that people will be able to initiate these "bets", and associate them with an active project.