Are there sportsbook-like betting options for other real life events?
July 29th, 2014 at 5:11:06 PM
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You may have just read the title and went "That's really a weird question, what's your intention for asking that?" Well, I don't even have intentions of betting anything. Read on and I'll explain.
So we know sports books exist. A person with no knowledge of a particular sport can just look at the betting odds, and all of a sudden he has as much information as the moneyline setter. For example, a person with no knowledge of soccer could see the 2014 world cup odds and know that Argentina is a strong team.
What I'm looking for is sportsbook-like betting options for other non-sport real life events. Such as a major economic depression, US and Russia going to war, Walmart going bankrupt, Clinton becomes president, earthquake in California etc.
My intention is that I would be able to know the probabilities of certain events happening that would make a big impact on my life decisions and economic decisions. It would be very hard for me to acquire such knowledge any other way. If a person who knows nothing about sport can instantly have significant knowledge of team strength by just looking at the sportsbook odds, in theory wouldn't it also work for other real life events?
The common approach most people take to things they don't know, is either try to figure it out themselves or look to authority for answers. Some people believe everything they see on New York times or Frobes, I don't need to explain why that's really really stupid (hint: different so called "experts" contrast each other to the point it's usually 50/50. You might as well flip a coin). And researching yourself, well, often it's way out of your area of expertise, so you'd be clueless how to actually research it. Even if you are able to research it, it often takes too much effort and may not be worth your time and energy.
The quickest and highly-functional advice I can give to a non-sports fan to immediately know the strengths of sports teams and their probabilities of winning, is to tell him to look at the odds. Hence, if he's got a friend that says "Brazil will win the world cup 100%", you know you're probably making a good bet vs him if he bets you on Brazil winning (among non-professional gamblers it tends to be 1:1). You would know it's a good bet because the sportbooks say 3:1.
So, the same concept would apply to real life activities as well. Let's say I am thinking about buying a $500 gift card to best buy. I would look at the "real life book" to see what are the odds of best buy going out of business in the near future, should such thing exist. That way I would know what the risk is for me to buy that gift card which is likely to require long term use.
I believe this would be a very efficient system of quickly knowing what is the truth on topics that you are not familiar with. The reason is sportsbooking has a high element of Darwinism in it. Survival of the fittest - if you constantly lay down shitty odds you will soon go out of business - plain and simple. Whereas a so called "expert annalist" on Frobes can say as much bullshit as he wants, be wrong as many times as he wants, and still get people to believe him. I've also seen many so called experts claim to be experts because they had a high % of success over extremely small sample sizes. Darwinism would quickly clean out those lucky guessers thinking they actually had skill, like the baccarat table cleans out superstitious players.
So, does such wonderful sources of information exist?
So we know sports books exist. A person with no knowledge of a particular sport can just look at the betting odds, and all of a sudden he has as much information as the moneyline setter. For example, a person with no knowledge of soccer could see the 2014 world cup odds and know that Argentina is a strong team.
What I'm looking for is sportsbook-like betting options for other non-sport real life events. Such as a major economic depression, US and Russia going to war, Walmart going bankrupt, Clinton becomes president, earthquake in California etc.
My intention is that I would be able to know the probabilities of certain events happening that would make a big impact on my life decisions and economic decisions. It would be very hard for me to acquire such knowledge any other way. If a person who knows nothing about sport can instantly have significant knowledge of team strength by just looking at the sportsbook odds, in theory wouldn't it also work for other real life events?
The common approach most people take to things they don't know, is either try to figure it out themselves or look to authority for answers. Some people believe everything they see on New York times or Frobes, I don't need to explain why that's really really stupid (hint: different so called "experts" contrast each other to the point it's usually 50/50. You might as well flip a coin). And researching yourself, well, often it's way out of your area of expertise, so you'd be clueless how to actually research it. Even if you are able to research it, it often takes too much effort and may not be worth your time and energy.
The quickest and highly-functional advice I can give to a non-sports fan to immediately know the strengths of sports teams and their probabilities of winning, is to tell him to look at the odds. Hence, if he's got a friend that says "Brazil will win the world cup 100%", you know you're probably making a good bet vs him if he bets you on Brazil winning (among non-professional gamblers it tends to be 1:1). You would know it's a good bet because the sportbooks say 3:1.
So, the same concept would apply to real life activities as well. Let's say I am thinking about buying a $500 gift card to best buy. I would look at the "real life book" to see what are the odds of best buy going out of business in the near future, should such thing exist. That way I would know what the risk is for me to buy that gift card which is likely to require long term use.
I believe this would be a very efficient system of quickly knowing what is the truth on topics that you are not familiar with. The reason is sportsbooking has a high element of Darwinism in it. Survival of the fittest - if you constantly lay down shitty odds you will soon go out of business - plain and simple. Whereas a so called "expert annalist" on Frobes can say as much bullshit as he wants, be wrong as many times as he wants, and still get people to believe him. I've also seen many so called experts claim to be experts because they had a high % of success over extremely small sample sizes. Darwinism would quickly clean out those lucky guessers thinking they actually had skill, like the baccarat table cleans out superstitious players.
So, does such wonderful sources of information exist?
July 29th, 2014 at 5:59:11 PM
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intrade?
