“Are prediction markets causing more harm than good?”

The other day I was invited to an “anti-debate” on the above topic, scheduled for this afternoon. I’d not heard about the concept of an anti-debate before; here’s the description: The Anti-Debate is a new format for debate where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge. Despite its name, the Anti-Debate is not anti-debate. It actually starts out like a traditional debate, with opening statements and rebuttals. But then it goes further — guiding participants to explore how they might integrate their perspectives into a bigger picture. Hence our tagline: First Debate, Then Elevate. Sounds reasonable to me. They refer to the concept of steel-manning, and I’m skeptical of that, but I agree that standard debate formats have problems (just read The Topeka School!) and I’m very open to this sort of alternative. The organizer, Winter Ku, referred to my posts on “the statistical skepticism about betting markets versus polls (self-reinforcing prices,…