Betting the Under the Covers

“I had never before attended a business conference with a 28 percent chance of an orgy.” Kevin Roose in the NYT (Gift Article): The Wager That Betting Can Change the World. “These people believe the world is full of bad information — biased news, out-of-touch punditry, loony conspiracy theories. Much of this information is spread by people without skin in the game. (Or worse, people with incentives to lie.) And many people have lost faith in the experts and institutions, such as the government and the media, that once served as trusted referees. Prediction markets, they believe, offer a better way to search for truth — rewarding those who are good at forecasting by allowing them to make money off those who are bad at it, while settling on the facts in an unbiased way.”