https://manifold.markets/Bayesian/will-luigi-mangione-be-convicted-of i'm out of liquidity to do more arbitrage but these markets are out of sync

Will Luigi Mangione be convicted of murder, before 2026?

73% chance.

There's no way he is convicted and all appeals exhausted by the end of 2025.

@Jx Just to clarify, is the automated summary correct that this market will resolve NO if Luigi hasn't been convicted with all appeals exhausted as of the end date, even if his guilt seems almost certain to most observers? That is what it seems like you agreed to below, but it seems odd.

@MugaSofer Sorry for not being clear on this market from the beginning. That had been my plan, especially after considering the comment from @placebo_username. But your comment and one from @MaximLott make me think it might be best to alter the resolution criteria. We don't know exactly how long conviction and exhausting appeals could take. I just worry about the possibility of making a point-in-time judgment based on existing information that proves to be incorrect later. I don't want to surprise or disappoint people who put in trades earlier. What do you all think would be a fair approach for resolving?

A @Bayesian market on this subject (located here) has the following criteria, among others:

- yes if Mangione is convicted of murder

- yes if Mangione pleads guilty

- no if Mangione is acquitted

- no if Mangione is not convicted

- no if Mangione never charged

- no if Mangione dies before a conviction

I do like these as a starting point. What if this market were to adopt them as well? And perhaps we could leave out any discussion of appeals for resolution....

@Jx I'd suggest resolving to PROB if he dies, to better match the title, but those otherwise seem fair to me.

@Jx can you extend the resolution date, several years? It was nowhere in the market description itself.

Or update the market to put the end date in the title?

@Jx Putting the end date in the title makes sense but I am against the changes to the resolution criteria. At the time my NO trades were made the description had already been updated to explicitly say it would resolve NO if his trial was still ongoing at the market end date.

And that was a material factor in me buying NO. I would not have bough NO at those prices if I though it wouldn't pay out in cases where he is convicted post 12/31/25

@PatrickHunter are you saying you bought No shares because of the AI summary that was automatically appended to the market description?

@Jx I think you should extend the close date.

Extending a market’s closing date is common practice. Changing the resolution criteria is not.

It seems that Manifold’s new implementation of automatically appending resolution criteria contributed to the issue here.

(@ian you might find this interesting — good example of why there should maybe not be an automatic additions.)

@snazzlePop there definitely should be automatic addtions, but it just needs refined because people are generally bad at reading things (me included!) and I don't think it would hard to make this feature a lot more robust whilst still be useful.

Perhaps something along the lines of giving the question author a prompt after an AI auto clarification as to whether they want to accept it (i.e., goes from "Possible clarification from creator (AI generated)" to "Confirmed clarification from creator (AI generated)".). In the event question creators are inactive, the prompt could just be superseded and added to the resolution.

The mass of bullet points that appear with multiple clarifications are also an issue, some questions end up an absolute mess. Previous AI-generated clarifications need to be removed / amended as appropriate to prevent repetition and contradiction.

cc: @ian

@snazzlePop I checked that it matched the comments, before actually entering but yes that is what made me think to make the bet.
I am fairly new to Manifold (in terms of being active I created my account and made a handful of trades awhile ago).

From my perspective, I am not super invested in this in that I am not super invested in Manifold. But I also had no reason to expect the closing date to change, and am not even sure I knew that was a feature. And spent somewhat more time than I really endorse making sure that the markets were actually going to resolve the way I thought they would in terms of comparing the resolution criteria side by side, checking the set end date ect. Part of why I normally avoid prediction markets is because I was worried about resolution criteria bs, and at this point am leaning towards expect straight up deleting my account because so far my experience using Manifold is leaning net negative for basically predictable to me reasons.

Meant to @ian in that.

@FEDWQSARESARFEDSA I'm going ahead and deleting. This is because Manifold has been more of an annoyance/distraction than I hoped. But that is non-trivially because dealing with this has made up a decent chunk of being on the site, it would be different if I had more significance positive interactions counteracting it.

How do you plan to resolve this? Is it based on a criminal conviction, with all appeals exhausted?

@placebo_username yes, conviction seems like a reasonable threshold

@placebo_username Doesn't all appeals exhausted take a long time?

@ian It can take many years, but most cases end in relatively quick plea deals.

@Jx What happens if he dies before then?

@Anthem good question. Inclined to resolve no because it will not have happened by the end date. Thoughts?

@Jx I don’t even see an end date on the market.

Should at most resolve NA, definitely not no!

I would resolve it yes bc the market doesn’t specify. So if you think he did it based on the evidence we have, then yes.

@MaximLott In fact there has been a resolution date of 12/31/25 since the start of this market. I'm not inclined to go with N/A based on the well expressed issues with that outcome here: https://manifold.markets/dreev/how-bad-is-it-to-resolve-a-market-a?play=true Resolving to true doesn't quite feel right because that's not what the market is about. The market is about whether Mangione is the person who shot Thompson. So yeah, if he dies before the market end date and he has not been convicted, then the market would resolve as no.

How bad is it to resolve a market as N/A?

I claim that resolving N/A is bad, that it's usually worth the effort to untangle ambiguities and hash out what's fairest. That can be exhausting, invidious work and it's understandable if you're not up for it, but at least consider it a last resort to resolve N/A. And if traders are lobbying for an N/A resolution, that might be all the more reason not to do it! But this is easier said than done. Sometimes you pose an innocent-seeming question and traders make different assumptions and bet accordingly. Later, the unanticipated ambiguities come to light and all possible resolutions feel grievously unfair to one set of traders or another. And it's possible that N/A is indeed what's least unfair. But here's a collection of reasons to resist it: 1. It's anticlimactic and throws away people's work This one seems obvious and relatively minor. Resolving N/A unwinds everyone's trades as if they never happened. Less obviously, that includes clawing back profits of those who correctly predicted a price movement and then cashed out. This invariably surprises people. 2. It spoils incentives This is kind of a corollary to reason #1 but is also a counterargument to a pro-N/A argument. Namely, that the real value of a prediction market is to see the market probability evolve. The final resolution, or lack thereof, doesn't undo that value. That's true but resolving N/A sets a bad precedent, making people less motivated to do the work to make market probabilities accurate in the first place if they think N/A is at all likely. 3. It can be a way to cheat Here's an extreme example to illustrate how bad this can be. Imagine creating a "Will aliens arrive by Christmas?" market. You dump all your money on YES. If aliens show up, resolve to YES, win big. If aliens don't show up, you start stirring up fairness concerns. It wasn't specified whether you meant extraterrestrial aliens. Etc. Get the debate going and then suggest that maybe the fairest thing is to resolve N/A. Everyone gets their money back, no harm no foul. But it was totally rigged! You made a big bet on YES and then found a way to weasel out of paying up when you were proven wrong. It's not normally so blatant but it's worth having that in mind. "Just give everyone their money back, no harm no foul" can be extremely incorrect. Totally harm, totally a foul. Be very skeptical of anyone suggesting that resolving N/A is what's fairest. Rule of thumb: if the ambiguities that arose were no more likely to arise for any of the ways the underlying question might've played out, then N/A may be what's least unfair. It can be a judgment call. 4. It can distort market probabilities in decision markets Say you want to know whether, if you buy Apple's VR headset, you'll actually use it enough that you'll be happy you bought it. So you make a market asking exactly that. You might naturally commit to resolving N/A if the market convinces you you'd regret the purchase. No purchase, no way to resolve the market. The problem is that this can spoil the incentives for traders and leave the market quite biased towards YES. Imagine I'm pretty sure you'd regret getting the VR headset. If I drive the price to my true estimate of, say, 10% that you'll like it, my upside is cut off. If I'm wrong and the price goes back up and you buy the thing and have no regrets, I lose money. If I'm right then you defer to the wisdom of the market, don't buy the thing, and resolve N/A. I'd be paying up if I'm wrong and getting no payout if I'm right. Thus I won't drive the price down enough to convince you not to do the thing. I might not bet NO at all, in case others drive the price down that far. What should you do instead? Maybe resolve to the market price in the case that you don't buy the headset. That does risk market manipulation. Driving the price to 1% is guaranteed profit if I think I have enough money to keep the price there. At that price I know you won't buy the headset and thus you'll resolve to the market's estimate of a 1% chance of headset happiness. Ka-ching. But my own meta-prediction is that that's too risky to try to exploit in practice. Especially if you don't commit to a particular threshold for doing vs not doing the thing. Any would-be manipulator has to worry that you might buy the headset despite the market seeming 99% sure you'll regret it. If you do, and don't in fact regret it, the manipulators lose their shirts. 5. Ambiguous outcomes are often better resolved to a probability Did the thing being predicted kinda/partially/ambiguously happen? You don't have to endlessly debate YES vs NO and give up and resolve N/A when neither side can claim a decisive victory. Instead the creator can make a judgment call like "this counts as 75% YES" and just resolve to that. Resolve-to-PROB, it's called. It may seem weird but is pretty exquisitely fair if that 75% is the best reflection of the weird reality that ended up happening. Exceptions A. Questions that are fundamentally nonpredictive, like "Is Trump good?". B. When the resolution criteria explicitly stipulate an N/A resolution if such-and-such happens. Like "Will Biden beat Trump? Resolves N/A if either of them dies before the election." C. When an error was made in specifying the resolution criteria -- such as changing the criteria after some people already bet -- such that any possible resolution would be truly unfair to some subset of traders. (I originally said some of this in a "will DALL-E be able to draw blue grass and a green sky?" market and a "will I regret bleaching my hair?" market. It was in the latter that user @Conflux pointed out the potential for market distortion in a "will I regret XYZ?" market. For more on trickinesses with decision markets, see Prediction Market Does Not Imply Causation.)

@Jx that’s absurd, but I’m going to hold my 5 mana to give you bad resolution review

@Jx The market title is not "will he be convicted", it's "did he do it." So if we're going by the title, I actually think the most consistent way to resolve would be based on your personal beliefs rather than the legal system. You resolve YES iff you are personally convinced he did it on 12/31/2025. (Now that loans are back, waiting to resolve is not a big deal).

@placebo_username @Jx Yes, this is right. The title suggests it’s whether you think he did it