@Austin Wow thank you for the generous donation! That puts me almost halfway to Ambition Level II!

Some thoughts and a question for you at the bottom:

Definitely open to hearing more about where you think I should take things! Ultimately, my goal for this project is to uncover how prediction markets can be most useful to normal people.

I agree that another dashboard collecting dust in the corner of the internet is NOT the outcome I want for this project. I think at least one better indicator of success, or at least learnings, would be me being able to say, "Hey we engaged X people on this topic. We found Y resonated a lot more than Z."

Anything that has any sort of continuity or retention beyond the grant is probably something to aim for.

Putting my "normie-whisperer" hat on, the reason I do feel like something might still need to be built is this:

I can picture myself making a snappy, interesting video about Polymarket moving X% upon news of Y, but I don't think I could enthusiastically point the average curious viewer to any of the existing prediction market platforms as their next step. It just wouldn't add that much value. I could see myself saying something like "if you want weekly roundups like these in your inbox..." or "If you want to be in the loop the minute Something HappensTM...," and pointing them to a recurring source of curated inbound information.

I would love to work with other forecasting pioneers, too! I'm not sure how that works in terms of morphing from the current scope of this grant though.

In fact, that's my question for you:

How much does ACX and Manifund expect me to hew to the original application? My guess is there's plenty of trust involved for me to use my best judgement. But can I keep adjusting this application as I go? Can someone say, "I want to donate $10K, but only for Project B, Section IV"?

Thanks!

@Dglid Thanks for the contribution! Feel free to rank your projects here in the comments if you have a preference. (I can also pass you my discord if you prefer to DM them).

@wasabipesto

Thank you for all these thoughtful comments!

1. That's right, I'd forgotten that they'll be getting rid of Managrams. I wonder if they would still be open to a more controlled version of mana exchange subject to their approval. I'll have note that.

2. Ah you're right that it might be best to keep arbitrage private. I've seen folks list arb markets in the comment of another market, but that isn't exactly a rational trading move.

3. Hmm the core of the idea of secret markets would be some way to more easily decrypt the hidden details of a private market via a third party site or a Chrome extension that adds the privileged details to the Manifold market site. I agree that you could have a document that organizes things, but the idea here would be that no one would have to remember what "Question 2" or "Option A" means across a bunch of different markets.

4. Thanks for the compliment! I whipped it up all in one night so it's a bit rough around the edges. Regarding the alerts, I set it up to work both on SMS and via email, but truthfully, I haven't tried getting it working on SMS, though hypothetically it should be set up. I have it working on email for me, and I can honestly say it's actually how I get a decent percentage of my breaking news!

5. Yes, regarding Predictor's Digest, I had originally envisioned it as a New York Times front page but populated with prediction markets. I seem to have seen another attempt at this somewhere on Twitter. That said, the newsletter also makes a ton of sense (maybe even more so). I think in that case the AI can ideally jump in and provide a quick blurb at its best guess of why the probability shifted.

6. Wow! I had never heard of Fatebook until you mentioned it, and it's pretty much exactly what I envisioned! And they have an API! I might extend it to cover a few of the user experiences I envisioned for my version.


Thanks again for all these thoughtful notes. My fresh new Fatebook prediction only gives a 15% chance of this project getting any funding at all, but I've had all these ideas kicking around for a while. Worth posting if only for the feedback. Thanks again! I'll circle back to the project soon to modify a few of the tool descriptions.