'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

Stitching unrelated proxies and sensing modalities into a coherent data model is a spatiotemporal graph reconstruction problem. The join predicates require non-trivial inference algorithms if you want to avoid being buried in false positives. From this you can derive an estimate of ground truth and a model of uncertainty at a point in space and time.

The model of uncertainty is dynamic and unpredictable. It is difficult to manipulate the measurement without producing data that falls outside the uncertainty model across every proxy by which someone might construct that uncertainty model. This is similar to how e.g. GPS spoofing is detected in military systems. All GPS updates must fit within a (classified) dynamic uncertainty model relative to INS; if an update falls outside the model then the GPS signal is presumed compromised and updates ignored.

At the limit, this restricts manipulation to values within the uncertainty model. If you have a lot of unrelated proxies, you can make the window of uncertainty tight enough that manipulation becomes effectively impossible. At a minimum, the adversary would need to be able to manipulate every proxy and modality feeding your uncertainty model simultaneously.

These graph, spatial, and spatiotemporal algorithms scale very poorly on traditional data infrastructure and these data models easily run into petabytes if you are stacking multiple independent data sources.

I can reasonably test that the bolt is in a locked position every time I close the door and turn handle on the lock. But a single remote sensor could have malfunctioned or simply be out of calibration a few degrees.

If the actual temperature at the airport is important to any set of users enough so that the difference between it being 18 or 22 deg C is relevant, one should expect that there be at least 3 sensors (much like clocks) and assuming variances between the 3 sensors are within tolerance an average of the 3 temperatures is taken.

Can this really be said with a straight face?

Suppose you're an oil company, or a trader with a large position, and "hottest year on record ten years in a row" is bad PR that will make bills you don't like more likely to get passed. Or for that matter a company selling carbon capture stuff who wants to make sure it goes the other way. How about tobacco companies?

This has been a huge problem for as long as public data has been used to make decisions affecting profits.

I have bad news for you. The manipulation of weather sensors for profit has a history that long pre-dates prediction markets. You just weren't paying attention until now.

Notice also that the murder (or tampering with sensors etc.) is the thing you don't want happening in your jurisdiction, so that's the thing you have to prohibit anyway, because even if you ban short selling or prediction markets in your jurisdiction, having them in any other jurisdiction in the world would allow anyone to just place their bet there and you're right back to needing to deter that by punishing the murder rather than the bet.

Probably automatable, and simply counting on automated systems and panic selling. Might be possible just with the AI package these days (not even requiring a traditional media article).

This is a ridiculously over-broad claim.

First of all, prediction markets shift incentives in a pernicious way; they don't magically erase or override all pre-existing incentive structures.

And secondly, professional athletes of all stripes appear to be receiving a lot more threats of violence from gamblers (including "prediction market traders") than they were a few years ago.

'Decapitated bodies, death threats, that's our daily life': Tennis players, helpless targets of angry gamblers [ https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/08/decapita... ]

https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4288181/wta-and-itf-release-a...

When the vice industry kept gamblers mainly confined to their own community, it was ugly enough (see the “people with pipes” debt collection trope you refer to). I don’t care too much about how people get their jollies, to the extent they choose what they’re getting into—live by the gun, die by the gun, etc. But I don’t see any good in letting vice-based behaviors and motivations slop out onto the wider world uninvited.

As I understand the basic claim, it’s something like “gambling’s good here, since greed incentivizes more accurate predictions in the aggregate.” (Which seems like an awfully skimpy fig leaf for the moral question, but leaving that aside...)

If there’s really economically-relevant marginal value in tightening the error bars some specific indicator, then the betting parlors or the domain participants should be able to measure and demonstrate that, right? And it would follow that the people who produce and rely on those indicators should be willing to pay something to capture the advantage in question, right? If, that is, the gains are worth more than the costs, for everyone involved.

So to your question, then: I’d draw the morality line at “don’t bring gambling-based forecasting to anywhere that didn’t ask for it.” If I—as the entity who incurs the cost to produce an indicator—want to hire the prediction market to run bets on it at arms’ length from me, fine. If not, no. The burden should be on the gambling interests to prove they’re contributing value to a specific domain, not on everyone else in every domain to prove gambling’s specific negative externalities.

It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second.

This vastly increases the barrier to entry for the normal person though. Is your position that just because laws don't work 100% of the time we shouldn't bother with them?

Isn't cryptocurrency (for the most part) very traceable? If you make it too hard and risky for most people to participate in, you'll limit the negative effects. You could probably quite effectively discourage it by sanctioning any transactions with one of these markets, you've got some opportunity because at some point the cryptocurrency needs to be converted to/from cash.

Of course, you'd have to dedicate some investigative and enforcement resources to the effort.

If to bet on a prediction market you have to both use a VPN and launder your money like you're a drug dealer, and I don't think many people would do it.

The existence of illegal gambling is far less a problem than the issue of legal gambling from your phone.

Lotto (at least where I live) also shows the odds, which are always ridiculously low. Still, people play, because the human brain isn’t built to understand odds. It’s essentially worthless as a metric.

When you put money on the line for events that are influencable, things get dark fast.

Seemingly harmless sports betting is rife with stories about mob members going to extreme lengths to change the outcome of a sporting event.

It's not hard to see how bad a bet like "so and so won't show up to event x" can go. These don't have to be bets about killing or injuring people to result in people being killed or injured to win a bet.

These companies are a pox on society.

The short version is, it's about control and power.