That is _hilarious_. Kinda true, but also omits a very important factor. Many big names of Substack that have no particular enthrallment to a16z: Scott Alexander, Nate Silver, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, the list goes on — love prediction markets for idiosyncretic reasons (basically, they love them as an epistemic tool not as gambling device; there's a reason Manifold, which is fake-money, is used by a number of them just alongside Polymarket and Kaishi). I imagine this is really as easy as "our whales love this feature, and Polymarket is ready to pay for it".
Yeah I hate Marc Andreessen as much as the next guy but this is definitely just the work of the rationalist-libertarian-statistics nerd cabal that writes on here.
Seriously though, the fact that polymarket (briefly) had a "prediction" or whatever about whether there would be nuclear war since trump launched his war of choice on Iran was evidence that we are rapidly moving towards the end times, at least in the US.
Oh there’s a bunch of guys at the top of the US military who think this is Jesus return time. I actually think that one of the very, very few positive aspects of the Trump presidency is that he’s obviously an atheist pretending to be Christian. If he were a true believing apocalyptic evangelist and also as stupid as he is there would be a nuclear warhead falling on Tehran tonight.
That's a fair point. The spectacle of the brass (including the secretary of war, poisoned as he is with the 3-4 liters of hair gel he uses daily) claiming this is a holy war is still pretty fucking grim, though.
That is _hilarious_. Kinda true, but also omits a very important factor. Many big names of Substack that have no particular enthrallment to a16z: Scott Alexander, Nate Silver, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, the list goes on — love prediction markets for idiosyncretic reasons (basically, they love them as an epistemic tool not as gambling device; there's a reason Manifold, which is fake-money, is used by a number of them just alongside Polymarket and Kaishi). I imagine this is really as easy as "our whales love this feature, and Polymarket is ready to pay for it".
Edit to add the link with proof that these views exist: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq
Yeah I hate Marc Andreessen as much as the next guy but this is definitely just the work of the rationalist-libertarian-statistics nerd cabal that writes on here.
Possibly of interest to some readers -- a simple way to build-your-own paywall.
https://tedium.co/2026/03/08/minimal-paywall-setup-idea/
So wait, how are YOU trying to control me???
Seriously though, the fact that polymarket (briefly) had a "prediction" or whatever about whether there would be nuclear war since trump launched his war of choice on Iran was evidence that we are rapidly moving towards the end times, at least in the US.
Oh there’s a bunch of guys at the top of the US military who think this is Jesus return time. I actually think that one of the very, very few positive aspects of the Trump presidency is that he’s obviously an atheist pretending to be Christian. If he were a true believing apocalyptic evangelist and also as stupid as he is there would be a nuclear warhead falling on Tehran tonight.
That's a fair point. The spectacle of the brass (including the secretary of war, poisoned as he is with the 3-4 liters of hair gel he uses daily) claiming this is a holy war is still pretty fucking grim, though.