The New Coffee Room

On point, there’s a new paper saying that the accuracy of prediction markets comes from the informed insiders not the ‘wisdom of crowds’.

This is by token use not seats/users. So one programmer spending tens of thousands a month on Claude beats everyone you know using ChatGPT.

We have a functioning version of this now with prediction markets, of course. People with inside knowledge can and do steer them towards being better predictors than individuals. The markets view the insiders as a bug but Hanson viewed them as a feature.

Yes—that’s basically right, and you’re remembering one of the more infamous policy/tech blowups of the early post-9/11 period.

What you’re thinking of: the “terrorism futures market”

The project was called the Policy Analysis Market (PAM), part of a broader DARPA initiative called FutureMAP.

• It was funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Developed in the early 2000s (planning started ~2001)
• Intended to use prediction markets to forecast geopolitical instability, including terrorism

Robin Hanson’s role

• Robin Hanson was not the sole creator, but he was:
  • A key intellectual influence on prediction markets
  • An adviser/advocate involved in the project’s conceptual framing

What the system was supposed to do

The idea was:

• Let participants trade contracts tied to events like:
  • Political instability
  • Regime changes
  • Terrorist attacks
• Market prices would reflect probabilities, aggregating dispersed information

The logic (very Hanson-esque):

Markets aggregate information better than experts.

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Why it blew up

When details became public in 2003, it was immediately reframed politically as:

“people betting on terrorist attacks”

And that framing stuck.

• Senators (notably Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan) denounced it as:
  • “grotesque” / “repugnant”
• Critics argued it could:
  • Incentivize terrorism
  • Create “assassination markets”

The media amplified examples like contracts on:

• Assassinations
• Attacks in the Middle East

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What happened next

• The program was killed almost immediately—within days of public exposure
• The DARPA official overseeing it (John Poindexter) resigned shortly after

I recall the DoD showing interest and starting a project with him only to have it shut down by Congress after they reframed it as ‘letting people bet on terrorist attacks’. This would have been early 2000s.

A new system for law enforcement. It shoots a small GPS ‘dart’ at a car which then sticks to it, allowing cops to track and pursue without entering high speed pursuit. Seems like a good idea. A lot better than high speed chases in metropolitan areas.

Here’s a Facebook blurb about it with video.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CGTvnu6Qa/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Most people won’t read past the headline, it just looks like additional confirmation that he has a drinking problem. His behavior with the US hockey team also reinforces it.

He did this to himself by filing a DOA lawsuit. But maybe Trump will be fooled. Though I hear he doesn’t have a lot of patience for drinkers.

‘Respirologist’ is Canadian for Pulmonologist.

Last year their presence at the major international conference for such people (held in the US) was down 47% from the year before.

This year, so far, registrations are down an ADDITIONAL 37% from last year’s reduced level.

Europe and Asia are down quite a bit too. There’s a similar but smaller conference in Europe in the fall that I usually go to. If this keeps up it will become the leading global conference.

So much winning.

Yes, though DeepMind was UK based before being absorbed into Google.

Yeah but he’s clearly getting too old for this shit now. At least if he wants to be FBI Director.

jon-nyc said:

Weird choice to sue. It’s only going to bring more attention to a story that is probably largely true.

This wasn’t going to come out but for the suit, for example.

Actually I think he’s mentioned this before. About LA, that is.

Funny one of the members of the board of education is J E Magruder. Got me curious if that was Jeb Magruder’s relative.

Doesn’t seem to be so although Jeb himself has a later-life connection to KY. He went to seminary after prison and ended up a Presbyterian minister in Lexington. hmmm…..

So Donald Trump is threatening NATO allies for not helping enough in a war they weren’t even consulted on, while Russia helps Iran target U.S. forces and gets waivers on oil sanctions.

Make that make sense

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/22/trump-nato-allies-consequences-list-00883619