Philadelphia Political Agnostics

Bi-Weekly Discussion - The Uses & Abuses of Prediction Markets (Repeat)

Sun, Aug 9 · 3:00 PM EDT

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Online

Online

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Click on the link above at the scheduled date/time to log in...

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THE USES & ABUSES OF PREDICTION MARKETS

INTRODUCTION:

NOTE: This is a repeat of our discussion back on Saturday, June 27th, since many of our regulars were not able to attend.

As this meetup's regulars know, I often try to emphasize that being a "political agnostic" means being humble enough to recognize the limits of your own knowledge on a particular subject and realizing when you need to seek out an expert opinion. That's why I typically try to ground our discussions by linking to polls of academic experts or forecasts from think tanks when they're available. But there's sometimes a concern that the so-called "experts" often are not held accountable when they make wrong predictions or give policy advice that turns out to be bad in hindsight, and we know they can be biased on some contentious issues and that there's often many facets of an issue that these polls don't illuminate.

That's why earlier this year, in a discussion on the Ukraine War, I also linked some prediction market bets being placed on the outcomes of battles in Ukraine. For those who aren't aware, prediction markets are online exchanges established for trading bets on the outcome of various events including elections, sports games, the weather, celebrity gossip, and even wars. Their business model is similar to poker games at a casino - i.e. you're betting against other players rather than the house, but the house takes a cut. With money at stake, I figured that could reduce some of the bias we might expect in journalistic coverage of the Ukraine War and also give us some more granular estimates of the war's progress that you can't find in the think tanks forecasts or expert polls. However, some of our members pushed back by arguing that it's unlikely that anyone with deep knowledge of this conflict (esp. Ukrainians & Russians) wouldn't be biased. Several people also pointed out the potential risk of cash-strapped soldiers or lower-tier government officials engaging in insider trading based on knowledge of covert military operations - perhaps even betting against their own side.

These sorts of debates have erupted into mainstream media focus in the ensuing months once it became clear that people with access to highly classified information engaged in insider trading ahead of the raid on Venezuela that captured Nicolas Maduro and the initial air strikes on Iran that killed the Ayatollah Khamenei. Left-leaning journalists uncovered that the two biggest prediction markets, Polymarket and Kalshi, both hired Donald Trump Jr. as an "advisor" and the Trump administration responded by decreasing regulations on them, even having the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sue states that tried to regulate them as gambling instead of event contracts. They also noticed that many bettors on these platforms appear to be risk-seeking, contrarian-thinking young men who often identify as MAGA or libertarians and who aspire to make some quick money off not only prediction markets but cryptocurrencies, meme stocks, NFTs, sports gambling, online poker - i.e. the type of people most liberal journalists instinctively dislike and don't understand, even as they lament Democrats' struggles winning over young male voters.

To some extent, the mix of pity & disdain that many liberal journalists feel for the "dumb money" flooding into prediction markets, i.e. the less-informed bettors who consistently lose money, is related to what Max Read calls the "suckerification crisis", a growing problem where various grifters (often right-wing) have been cultivating a "huge and immediately accessible collection of suckers, waiting to have their avidity and paranoia exploited for cash." (He compares the sensationalist ads of Polymarket & Kalshi to Fox News' "buy gold" ads pitched to an older right-wing demographic.) But there's also a growing conflict between the "smart money", i.e. the top prediction market bettors making millions, and liberal journalists that Nate Silver wrote about in his 2024 book On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. Silver refers to these two groups as "The River" - i.e. the risk-tolerant, tech-savvy investors of Wall Street & Silicon Valley - and "The Village" - i.e. the cautious, consensus-driven establishment in legacy media outlets & tenure-track positions in academia. In either case, this culture clash along with the preexisting stigma on gambling and rising concern about Gen Z's "financial nihilism", has led most of the mainstream media to portray prediction markets as not some sort of promising innovation or relatively harmless pastime but rather an elaborate con orchestrated by the "Tech Right".

However, as a recent CNN report found, many notable economists still argue that prediction markets could be very useful if properly regulated, although they have noted some recent developments that have surprised or worried them. The economist Justin Wolfers, who's gone from being one of the chief advocates of prediction markets to very outspoken about the potential harms, has said he still stands by the core thesis:
"A fundamental economic problem is, how do we aggregate information? I believed back then, and I still believe, that markets are an incredibly efficient way of doing that… Most of the alternatives are pretty bad, and markets appear to be less bad." However, Wolfers also expressed concern about prediction markets enabling compulsive gambling that financially ruins 1-2% of users, saying: "If you give me the choice of unfettered laissez-faire gambling versus shut it all down… I think there's still a reasonable case for shut it all down."

Prediction markets & forecasting tournaments have long been popular with the "rationalist community" that's centered around blogs like Overcoming Bias, Less Wrong, AstralCodexTen (formerly SlateStarCodex), ClearerThinking-dot-org, and non-profits like the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). This makes sense, since a forum for betting on beliefs provides a testing ground for their methods of cognitive self-improvement. The well-known rationalist blogger Scott Alexander wrote the Prediction Market FAQ, one of the best introductions to and defenses of prediction markets, back in Dec. 2022. He argued that "a poll of experts named 'the breakdown of trusted information sources' as one of the leading challenges of the 21st century... Millions of words have been written on how to solve this crisis, with most ideas being impossibly naive or dangerously authoritarian. I think prediction markets are a genuine solution, one that can’t come fast enough."

However, there's been some criticisms within the community more recently, like M. Abramov's recent essay on Less Wrong entitled "Forecasting is Way Overrated, and We Should Stop Funding It". He argued that: "Total prediction market volume is something like $500B/year, but it just isn’t very useful. We get to know the odds on every basketball game player prop, and if BTC is going to go up or down in the next 5 minutes. While some people suggest that these trivial markets help sharpen skills or identify good forecasters, I don’t think there is any evidence of this, and it is more wishful thinking.,. I don’t think there is very much in the way of 'this forecasting happened, and now we have made demonstrably better decisions regarding this terminal goal that we care about'."

So what should we make of all this fuss over prediction markets? To help us think more clearly, I've broken up the wide-ranging debates into 4 sections to isolate the different types of arguments for & against them...

In the 1st section, we'll look at the theoretical ideal of predictions markets that aggregate the "wisdom of the crowd" and use betting to incentivize true expert to step forward while disincentivizing virtue signaling or random guessing. This is why the economist Bryan Caplan famously said that "betting is a tax on bulls*t". We'll try to determine if they're more accurate than alternatives like expert panels, money-less forecasting tournaments, and AI models, based on the argument that when there's enough money at stake, smart investors will synthesize information from the other available sources and produce something at least as accurate if not better. It may seem unsavory to turn everything into a "market" or "casino", but if synthesizing all this information to get the most accurate forecast is incredibly time-consuming & expensive, it makes sense we'd need to financially compensate the people doing this work - and putting them effectively on a commission instead of a salary ensures they'll try their hardest to be right. The counterargument is that betting could degrade accuracy by allowing wealthy individuals, corporations & foreign governments to effectively buy "self-fulfilling prophecies" and inflate "speculative bubbles" - i.e. skew public perception by betting on their favored narrative or against their disfavored narrative. This is somewhat akin to "pump & dump" or "short & distort" schemes in the stock market, but instead of doing it for monetary gain, by using prediction markets those with deep pockets could arguably afford to risk/lose lots of money to skew public perception for political reasons. For example, someone could artificially boost or tank a political candidate's apparent odds, make it look like a bill is about to pass or fail in Congress, imply the Supreme Court is about to make a specific ruling, or suggest a military operation is on the verge of success or collapse. However, as we'll see, proponents of prediction markets argue this would effectively just subsidize people uncovering their attempt at manipulation, and in most cases this dynamic (i.e. the "efficient market hypothesis") would allow the market to quickly correct itself.

In the 2nd section, we'll look at the debate over whether prediction markets are fair and/or sustainable if it turns out that most people lose money and a small number of elite traders reap most of the financial gains. These groups are often referred to as "dumb money" and "smart money" by investment professionals. Even pundits who are okay with letting lots of people blow their money on frivolous betting are afraid the prediction markets won't have enough cash flow (a.k.a. "liquidity") to function if/when average people begin to wise up and stop betting. We'll also address the related problem of most of the bettors flocking to sports gambling, celebrity gossip, and pop cultural trivia, whereas advocates of prediction markets are hoping to steer the betting action towards more serious issues where there are big positive externalities if prediction markets can increase our understanding. Possible solutions include encouraging more prediction market wagers for hedging purposes, subsidizing thinner but important prediction markets, having "market makers" encourage bets on both sides, and/or using AI agents in place of human bettors.

In the 3rd section, we'll look at the debate over whether the insider trading encouraged by prediction markets are socially useful or harmful insofar as they make private knowledge public prior to any official disclosures by shifts in the betting odds. Essentially, we want to know how we can structure & regulate prediction markets so they incentivize the exposure of lies & corruption but don't expose necessary secrets in ways that could prove disastrous for society. As we'll see, the ongoing debates about insider trading in prediction markets has resurfaced the older debate over how it affects the stock market. Decades ago, economists like Milton Friedman & Henry Mann famously argued that insider trading was socially beneficial because it could deflate market bubbles and should be legalized. There's also interesting speculations about how prediction markets could offer the sort of "surveillance-from-below" that David Brin wrote about in his book The Transparent Society (1998) and Julian Assange advocated for in his famous essay "Conspiracy as Governance" (2006).

In the 4th section, we'll look at the debate over whether allowing people to bet on bad events like wars, crimes, man-made or natural disasters is good because it helps us understand & prevent these things or actually incentivizes bad actors to cause or exacerbate them. One of the early attempts at this was the Policy Analysis Market formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that was shut down in August 2003 after multiple US senators condemned it as akin to morbid forms of betting like "death pools" or criminal ventures like "assassination markets". As we'll see, getting people to overcome their instinctive revulsion towards bets on death & destruction may be the easy part. We may need to make some difficult tradeoffs if/when we allow placing bets on negative events - i.e. if it's very important to understand them better because it could benefit thousands or millions of people, it may be worth running the risk that a bad actor will do something harmful to a few people. Once again, striking the right balance may come down to how we structure & regulate prediction markets.

WHAT'S THE DISTRIBUTION OF OPINION AMONG EXPERTS?

Economists have spent decades theorizing about prediction markets, so they're probably the most relevant subject matter experts. The University of Chicago's Kent Clark Center (formerly known as the IGM Experts Panel) polled 39 top US economists in April 2026 and asked them 2 questions back in April about prediction markets: (1) Do prediction markets provide substantially more accurate forecasts of key macro-financial variables than traditional sources such as surveys of professional forecasters? and (2)
Would retail market participants be measurably better off if sports contracts on prediction markets were regulated more like gambling than like financial derivatives? Based on their weighted responses, 36% agreed with the 1st question, while 38% were uncertain and 26% disagreed. On the 2nd question, there was more agreement - based on their weighted responses, 57% agreed, 22% were uncertain, and 20% disagreed. The Kent Clark Center posted an article by the economist Duncan Weldon on the potential value & regulatory options for prediction markets that gives some broader context to these polls.

It might be useful to look at the Kent Clark Center's previous polls on state-run lotteries and sports betting for comparison. Only 18% of the surveyed economists thought state lottos improved social welfare (41% were uncertain, 41% disagreed), but 32% thought more states should legalize sports gambling (52% were uncertain, 16% disagreed). If you look at the comments some of them made on these issues, you can get a sense of why they took a given position. Many of them view gambling as akin to a regressive tax on those who are less educated & more impulsive. But others note that some people will almost inevitably want to gamble, and (as with drugs) prohibition can drive it underground while legalization allows it to be regulated & taxed.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any polls of other social scientists like political scientists or psychologists. However, I did come across a recent Bloomberg article that cited a flash survey of 53 Wall Street professionals in the US conducted by Crisil Coalition Greenwich in Jan. 2026. It found that "around 43% of market structure experts view prediction markets as an innovative value-add to the overall marketplace... A similar range were neutral on the space’s prospects, while around a fifth said the markets encourage gambling and introduce additional 'risk noise' instead of trading signals." It's interesting to note that this breakdown among Wall Street pros is close to the breakdown of how economists answered the Kent Clark Forum's 1st question.

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

It's useful to understand the cognitive tools that geopolitical forecasters use, since even though they're typically just putting their reputation on the line rather than their money, there's a lot of overlap with the most successful traders on prediction markets. In Oct. 2021, we had a meetup entitled "Can We Predict Geopolitical Conflict?" We looked at how to predict the onset of wars, WMD development & usage, military coups & popular revolts, as well as civil wars & genocide. We tried to apply some of Phil Tetlock's tips for geopolitical forecasting, like: (1) break seemingly intractable problems into tractable sub-problems, using Fermi estimates, (2) strike the right balance between "inside" (event-specific) and "outside" (reference class) views, (3) strike the right balance between under- and overreacting to new evidence, by using Bayesian-style updating, and (4) look for the clashing causal forces at work in each problem, and consider multiple theories & models.

For those seeking to understand a complex issue, one of the alternatives to prediction markets is simply looking at polls of experts. We addressed the pros & cons of relying on expert consensus in a meetup back in March 2024 entitled "How Much Should We Trust the Experts?" Of particular interest is the 1st section where we talked about several ways to account for biases among experts, like looking for what lawyers call "admissions against interest" and using some heuristics that the rationalist community calls "bounded distrust" and the "general factor of correctness" (a.k.a. correct contrarian cluster). These are tactics the savvier investors in prediction markets would use to know when they should side with the expert consensus or get against it.

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over the pros & cons of prediction markets. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about 60 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussion. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

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I. DOES BETTING REAL MONEY MAKE PREDICTION MARKETS MORE ACCURATE THAN EXPERT PANELS, FORECASTING TOURNAMENTS & AI MODELS - OR DOES IT ALLOW THE RICH TO BUY "SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES" & INFLATE "SPECULATIVE BUBBLES"?

1a) Rational Animations, "Prediction markets: can betting be good for the world?" (video - 13:30 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA27x7GRMZQ

1b) Nick Pardini, "Why Prediction Markets May Lose Their Forecasting Power [if Insider Trading is Banned]" (video - 9:00 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8hjZ_vjz9o

• Dan Schwarz, "Are Prediction Markets Good for Anything?"
  https://asteriskmag.com/issues/14/are-prediction-markets-good-for-anything
• Alex Tabbarock, "Prediction Markets Are Very Accurate"
  https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/prediction-markets-are-very-accurate.html
• Jeremy B. Merrill, Leslie Shapiro & Mariana Alfaro, "Why prediction markets’ election picks are useful, even when they seem wrong" (Wash. Post)
  https://archive.ph/ERRrn
• Jeremiah Johnson, "Prediction Markets Have an Elections Problem: Why doesn’t smart money drive out dumb money in election markets?"
  https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/prediction-markets-have-an-elections-problem-jeremiah-johnson
• John Sides, "The perils of election prediction markets"
  https://goodauthority.org/news/the-perils-of-election-prediction-markets/
• Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian & Anthony Scaramucci, "Don’t Trust the Political Prediction Markets"
  https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/dont-trust-the-political-prediction-markets
• Sips & Scale, "How Accurate Is Polymarket Compared To Superforecasters?"
  https://archive.ph/fTQXP
• Jose Antonio Lanz, "AI Now Matches Prediction Markets in Forecasting Real Events, Study Finds"
  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-now-matches-prediction-markets-230346352.html
• Ezekiel Njuguna, "Can AI Actually Beat Prediction Markets? Real Wallet Data from Polymarket Reveals the Truth"
  https://medium.com/mountain-movers/can-ai-actually-beat-prediction-markets-real-wallet-data-from-polymarket-reveals-the-truth-077949eed10d
• Matthew Wein, "Weaponizing the odds: Prediction markets as a new vector for foreign influence"
  https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/weaponizing-the-odds-prediction-markets-as-a-new-vector-for-foreign-influence/
• Derek Thompson w/ Justin Wolfers, "Should Presidential Campaigns Spend More Money Manipulating Intrade [leading up to the 2012 election]?"
  https://archive.ph/dBcgx
• Aubrey Strobel, "No, Polymarket Whales Aren't Evidence of Prediction Market Manipulation"
  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-polymarket-whales-arent-evidence-181038513.html

II. ARE PREDICTION MARKETS FAIR/SUSTAINABLE EVEN IF MOST PEOPLE LOSE MONEY & BIG WINS ARE CONCENTRATED AMONG A FEW ELITE TRADERS?

2a) PBS Two Cents, "What Prediction Markets Don't Want You to Know" (video - 11:31 min, start at 3:01)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X-KNvqoBM&t=3m1s

2b) NBC, "This NYC bar gave Knicks fans a free bar tab - by hedging on Kalshi" (video - 0:50 min)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V_u5fdzvsqk

• Theis Ingerslev Jensen, "Wisdom of the Few? Prediction Markets Are Driven by a Small Number of Skilled Traders"
  https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/wisdom-of-the-few-prediction-markets-are-driven-by-small-number-of-skilled-traders
• Caitlin Ostroff, "We Investigated Polymarket’s Deceptive Marketing Campaign. Here’s What We Found: The promotion bolsters perception that Polymarket lets users make fast and easy money" (WSJ)
  https://archive.ph/oBFph
• Andrew Gilman, "Prediction markets and the need for 'dumb money' as well as 'smart money'"
  https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/10/25/prediction-markets-and-the-need-for-dumb-money-as-well-as-smart-money/
• Igor, "Noisy Traders Are Not Dumb Money: The smart-money-vs-dumb-money framing misreads how prediction markets actually work"
  https://functionspace.dev/research/noisy-traders-are-not-dumb-money
• Quantpedia, "Who Profits from Prediction Markets?" (summary of Joshua Della Vedova's study 'Who Profits from Prediction Markets? Execution, not Information')
  https://quantpedia.com/who-profits-from-prediction-markets/
• Nick Whitaker & J. Zachary Mazlish, "Why prediction markets aren’t popular: Prediction markets are legal, contrary to popular belief. But they remain unpopular [aside from sports & elections], because they lack key features that make markets attractive."
  https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-prediction-markets-arent-popular/
• Ayesha Aziz, "Vitalik Buterin Warns Prediction Markets Risk Collapse Without Pivot [Towards Hedging]"
  https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/vitalik-buterin-warns-prediction-markets-risk-collapse-without-pivot
• Mark Roulston, "Prediction markets are not a free lunch [i.e. they need subsidies]"
  https://www.crucialab.net/post/free-lunch/
• Jess Marquez, "Is the complex world of market-making the next growth engine for bookmakers?"
  https://igamingbusiness.com/sports-betting/market-making-opportunities-2026/
• Alex Janiak, "How AI Will Save Prediction Markets"
  https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ab3NKBkrLhm6ssszH/how-ai-will-save-prediction-markets

III. DO PREDICTION MARKETS ENCOURAGE INSIDER TRADING & EXPOSING SECRETS - AND IF SO, (WHEN) IS THAT GOOD OR BAD?

3a) Jon Esq., "Why Insider Trading is GOOD" (video - 8:36 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-W04MkV8QY

3b) CNBC, "Bets On Death Of Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Khamenei And Others Draw Scrutiny" (video - 2:35 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuPbHtGEE9s

• Alicia Park, "Why Prediction Markets Need Insider Trading: Here’s why the godfather of prediction markets [Robin Hanson] thinks it's a good thing" (WSJ)
  https://archive.ph/m22tX
• Scott Alexander, "Use Prediction Markets To Fund Investigative Reporting"
  https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/use-prediction-markets-to-fund-investigative
• Julia R. Cartwright, "Government fraud is everywhere. Prediction markets can fix that" (Wash. Post)
  https://archive.ph/DTcVQ
• Scott Alexander, "Prediction Markets Suggest Replacing Biden"
  https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing
• Anthony Robledo, "Prediction markets are coming to Hollywood – and may ruin your favorite show"
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2026/06/14/prediction-markets-tv-spoilers-betting-euphoria-survivor/90484649007/
• Anna Dreber, et al., "Using prediction markets to estimate the reproducibility of scientific research"
  https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1516179112
• Saahil Desai, "Insider Trading Is Going to Get People Killed: War markets are a national-security threat."
  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/polymarket-insider-trading-going-get-people-killed/686283/
• Andjela Radmilac, "How Polymarket war betting is putting civilians at risk by disrupting humanitarian aid maps"
  https://cryptoslate.com/polymarket-war-bets-collide-with-the-maps-civilians-use-to-survive/
• Jim Harper, "Prediction Markets’ Deadly Implications [are Exaggerated]"
  https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/prediction-markets-deadly-implications/

IV. DO PREDICTION MARKETS ON BAD EVENTS (WAR, CRIME, NATURAL DISASTERS) MOTIVATE US UNDERSTAND & PREVENT THEM, OR INCENTIVIZE BAD ACTORS TO BRIBE/THREATEN REPORTERS OR EVEN CAUSE THE BAD EVENTS THEMSELVES?

4a) Columbia Business School, "Changing Perceptions: The Promise of Climate Prediction Markets" (video - 19:00 min, start at 5:29)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBnJV8ursZc&t=5m29s

4b) Elrodd, "The Inevitable Horror of Assassination Markets" (video - 10:25 min, start at 5:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZlRCThKuqI&t=5m0s

• Tim Craig, "Polymarket slammed for ‘disrespectful’ dildo throwing bets after second man is arrested at WNBA game"
  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/polymarket-slammed-disrespectful-dildo-throwing-135201432.html
• Eleanor Taylor, "Policy Analysis Market and the Political Yuck Factor — why Americans shied away from a geopolitical futures market."
  https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/PAM/PRESS/SIRC-4-27-04.shtml
• Andy Greenberg, "Meet The 'Assassination Market' Creator Who's Crowdfunding Murder With Bitcoins" (Forbes)
  https://archive.ph/JS06l
• Scott Alexander, "Metaculus Monday [and the COVID Pandemic]"
  https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/metaculus-monday
• Brian Sandalow, "Using Prediction Markets to Raise Climate Concern: Participation in climate markets bolsters backing for anti-warming measures"
  https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2023/06/using-prediction-markets-to-raise-climate-concern/
• Christopher Freiman, "Prediction Markets and The Ethics of Betting on Bad News: Accurately predicting disaster is actually quite useful, and prediction markets reward people for operationalizing information others don’t yet have"
  https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-ethics-of-betting-on-future-bad-news/
• Jamie L. Pietruska, "Catastrophe markets: Americans love to gamble. But placing bets on wildfires, floods and storms comes with serious moral and social costs"
  https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-the-real-cost-of-betting-on-weather-catastrophes
• Nick Cleveland-Stout, "Think tanker altered Ukraine war map before big Polymarket payout"
  https://responsiblestatecraft.org/isw-polymarket-ukraine-war-map/
• Sean Anthony Guillory & Amy Nelson, "A Journalist Covered a Missile Strike. Then the Death Threats Started [from Polymarket Bettors]."
  https://archive.ph/mkFKf

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Commonwealth Club Event: "Balancing Public Safety & Civil Liberties"

Wed, Aug 12 · 3:00 PM EDT

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Online

Online

Join the Commonwealth Club of California on Aug. 12, 2026 for a panel discussion on "Balancing Public Safety & Civil Liberties in the Age of Innovation".

HOW TO WATCH:
This event is $5 for online tickets, and you must register at the link below, at which point you'll be emailed a link to the online event - https://commonwealthclub.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/instances/a0FVb00000HYMSXMA5

EVENT DESCRIPTION:
Since the passage of Proposition E in 2024, San Francisco has expanded its use of technology in public safety, including drones, automated license plate readers, and the city’s new Real Time Investigations Center. As these tools become part of everyday policing, they’ve prompted conversations about how the city can pursue safer streets while protecting privacy and civil liberties:

- How should new technologies be evaluated and overseen?
- What transparency and accountability measures make sense?
- What can San Francisco’s experience teach other cities considering similar approaches?

Join us for a thoughtful conversation about technology, public safety and civil liberties—and what responsible innovation looks like in practice.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS, MODERATOR & HOST:

• Derrick Lew, the Chief of San Francisco Police Department since 2025, has served as a SFPD police officer since 2003 and has led narcotics investigations, directed the Crime Gun Investigations Center, headed the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center, and oversaw patrol operations throughout the City. He holds a BS in economics from Boston University and is a graduate of the FBI’s National Academy.
• Barry Friedman is a law professor at NYU School of Law, the founding director of the Policing Project, and regularly serves as a litigator or litigation consultant in a variety of matters in the federal and state courts where he represents both civil liberties claimants and state and local governments. He's the author of the book Policing Without Permission (2017). He graduated from the University of Chicago and received his JD from Georgetown.
• Marisa Rodriguez is the CEO of the Union Square Alliance, a downtown association dedicated to enhancing San Francisco’s Union Square Distric. Prior to that, she served for 9 years with the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. She has a BS from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a JD from the University of San Francisco School of Law.
• Megan Cassidy, the moderator, is a Crime/Criminal Justice Reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. She has a MA in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
• Robert Melton, the host, is the Art Curator and Co-chair of the Arts Member-led Forum at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.

ABOUT THE EVENT HOST:
The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. Every year, they present more than 450 forums on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy. Their stated mission is to be the leading national forum open to all for the impartial discussion of public issues important to the membership, community and nation. To learn more, go to: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/who-we-are
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Braver Angels Event: "What Role Does Patriotism Have in Schools?"

Mon, Aug 17 · 7:00 PM EDT

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Online

Online

The Orange County Alliance of Braver Angels is hosting an online discussion in partnership with Dignity.Us, AllSides, the Prohuman Foundation, the Listen First Project, Living Room Conversations, and Courageous Conversations about our Schools. I thought it might be of interest to our members...

Event Description:
What place does patriotism have in schools? Join a live national conversation with diverse voices from across America.
Patriotism is one of those terms that seems pretty simple—until you start talking about it.

Across the country, Americans are debating whether schools should help shape students’ sense of patriotism and civic identity. Some believe schools should cultivate love of country, civic responsibility, and national unity, while others worry that teaching patriotism can become a form of indoctrination or limit open discussion about difficult parts of American history.

In this live online event, a politically and culturally diverse group of students, parents, educators, writers, and community members will explore what patriotism means to them personally and what role, if any, schools should play in shaping it.

Rather than trying to win an argument, this conversation aims to model thoughtful listening, honest dialogue, and the possibility of finding more common ground than we often imagine.

Questions? Contact Mary Thomas-Vallens, marytv@braverangels.org; Ken Futernick ken@schoolconversations.org; Paige Swartz paige@braverangels.org

Registering for the Online Event:
This is a FREE event; however, you will need to register for it. Go to the following Eventbrite link & fill out the registration form:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/what-role-does-patriotism-have-in-schools-a-fishbowl-webinar-registration-1990250374446?discount=BRAVER&aff=oddtdtcreator

Registration for this event will be closed 12 hours prior to the scheduled starting time. Check your email for the confirmation message with the Zoom link - if you don't see it, check your "Junk" folder.

• Note: Braver Angels events may be recorded, and may be shared with media or used in Braver Angels publications, including web pages. Participants who object to this may disable their video.

What is "Braver Angels"?
Formerly known as "Better Angels", Braver Angels is an organization founded in 2016 to depolarize American politics through grassroots organizing. They do this primarily by hosting events for cross-partisan dialogue & civil debate. To learn more, go to https://braverangels.org/

Braver Angels Debate: "Should We Adopt Networked Surveillance?"

Thu, Aug 20 · 7:00 PM EDT

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Online

Online

Debate Topic:
Resolved: "New York State communities should implement networked surveillance (like Flock)."

About this Event:
The New York State chapter of Braver Angels is hosting a debate on networked surveillance systems that I thought might be of interest to some of our members. For a basic overview of Flock Safety, one of the major providers of networked surveillance for law enforcement, check out its Wikipedia entry and note the sections on "Efficacy" and "Privacy concerns and potential misuse".

You can also check out a recent public opinion poll on networked surveillance conducted by Critical Tech Solutions that suggests that nearly three-quarters of respondents (73%) said that smart surveillance systems help emergency services respond faster. But many have significant concerns about continued surveillance after emergencies have passed, with a staggering 83.3% of respondents saying they believe smart surveillance is likely being misused right now, without public knowledge, while 77.3% say these systems could violate personal privacy.

What do you think? Is networked surveillance the best way to reduce crime and ensure public safety, or is it a dangerous infringement on our privacy and civil liberties? Join us Aug. 20th at 7:00 pm ET to share your perspective on "Resolved: New York State communities should implement networked surveillance (like Flock)."

Remember, our resolutions never represent Braver Angels' stance on any issue, and we alternate between speeches for and against the resolution.

Come join us for this free national debate, in which all participants from across the ideological spectrum will have an opportunity to speak and ask their questions. Tell us what you have experienced and what you think.

Register on the Eventbrite page and the Zoom link will be emailed to you a couple of days prior to the event. Keep an eye out!

Questions? Email Jennifer Borgioli Binis at jborgioli@gmail.com.

Registering for the Online Debate:
This is a FREE event; however, you will need to register for it. Go to the following Eventbrite link & fill out the registration form:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/resolved-nys-communities-should-implement-networked-surveillance-registration-1994304069156?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true&discount=BRAVER

Registration for this debate will be closed 12 hours prior to the scheduled starting time. Check your email for the confirmation message with the Zoom link - if you don't see it, check your "Junk" folder.

• Note: Braver Angels events may be recorded, and may be shared with media or used in Braver Angels publications, including web pages. Participants who object to this may disable their video.

What is "Braver Angels"?
Formerly known as "Better Angels", Braver Angels is an organization founded in 2016 to depolarize American politics through grassroots organizing. They do this primarily by hosting events for cross-partisan dialogue & civil debate. To learn more, go to https://braverangels.org/

About Braver Angels debates:
You probably haven’t experienced anything like a Braver Angels Debate. This is a highly structured conversation in which a group of people think together, listen carefully to one another, and allow themselves to be touched and perhaps changed by each other’s ideas.

To learn more about our debates, you can take a look at our Quick Start Guide and this video about the spirit of a Braver Angels Debate. For further information, including to find additional upcoming events or view recordings of some of our past debates, please visit: https://braverangels.org/what-we-do/debates/