Rest assured. Chomsky’s not dead. (Neither is DVD.)

Yes bettors should be aware that, if both men remain alive through Dec 7, this prop will resolve No (neither will have survived the other)

@AdamBraff why wasn’t this added to the description before? This should have been clarified a long time ago.

@MachiNi because it's simply the dictionary definition of "survive" (in transitive form, as used here) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/survive

@AdamBraff your market didn’t state a resolution date. If your recent update was needed it should have been added earlier. If it was not needed then why make it?

@AdamBraff

"to remain alive after the death of"

Since no one died it’s indeterminate (not false) whether one survived the other.

@MachiNi this prop (and all the props in this series) are mirrors of props in an underlying contest, linked prominently in the description, whose rules state "Events must take place by the stated date or, if no date is stated, between January 19 and December 7, 2025, to count as Yes."

@AdamBraff it is neither true nor false that Chomsky outlived Van Dyke.

@MachiNi assuming DVD lives for another 14 hours, it is false that Chomsky survived (lived after the death of) DVD by the clearly stated deadline of Dec 7

@AdamBraff I think the way you phrased your market was intended to trick people.

@MachiNi it would have been much more aligned with Manifold's platform norms to N/A in the case where a question's premise fails to materialize, but it looks like the creator has defined it away to be a No.

Keeping the resolution criteria off site is definitely against the spirit though -- the exact criteria should have been in the market description on the platform.

@Eliza thanks for the info on local norms, that's good to know. As a practical matter, the underlying forecasting contest is in its 10th year (twice as old as Manifold?) and has its own norms, including tersely written props and close calls being decided by a panel of judges. I didn't think it was against the spirit of this site to have rules housed offsite in the way that https://manifold.markets/ZviMowshowitz

does. But if it stresses people out, they should avoid betting on my markets in the future.

@AdamBraff

1. It's not so big of a deal really...you can run whatever market here however you wish. If people don't like it they will just avoid it. If they give you a 1 star review no one will notice anyway. I think hosting the contest questions here is neat.

2. It's fairly common to see markets cite other resolution sources like "resolves the same as this Polymarket <link>"...that's not a problem in and of itself.

3. IMO if people bet without asking, or without reading everything available, it's on them and they can suffer whatever consequences happen (I might be in the minority now but w/e I still believe it).

4. The part that is against the norms is that I think most users here would expect a market to point out something as critical as "resolves No if they're both alive by a specific date" in the description as a courtesy to traders. Or have a warning mark such as an asterisk in the market title or [NPC 2025] tagging it clearly as part of a special thing. Some users may have bet on it directly from the search results pages where they only see the title, which reads as a very straightforward question unless you do click in.

5. I'm guessing you don't care so much in this specific case, but the effect your clarification had on the current prediction seems to have been large enough to demonstrate that the existing form of the market didn't do a great job of conveying what people were betting on. I think being a little more explicit in the description could help get better predictions on future questions.

@Eliza thanks for the thoughtful note. We had quite a few close ones this year, including https://manifold.markets/AdamBraff/by-july-1-will-the-world-break-the , where you can see in the comments that I solicited input from the crowd and then my judges as events played out unexpectedly (in a way that frankly would have been hard to guess ahead of time, even if easy in hindsight). If I post the mirror props here again next year, I'll include a bolder warning that people should read the full rules if they are truly interested in the outcome, or else stay away.

@AdamBraff you are in the wrong here. No, they should not avoid such markets, you should make your markets titles and descriptions accurate. @mods take a look at this. And I didn't bet on this market. Imagine I assumed Noam Chomsky died because of the 4%.

@ikoukas I don't think saying "you suck" is in alignment with the community guidelines either. You can probably express your disagreement with a more appropriate tone.

@Eliza Agreed with absolutely everything you said here. Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful response.

@AdamBraff I think a title clarification would be good. Most people don't interpret close dates as a guarantee that it has to happen by the close date, so clarification there seems helpful. That's a fairly good way to balance "the underlying market is weird" with "I'd like to duplicate it on Manifold and uphold good market creation norms".

@ikoukas Please keep it polite.

@MachiNi false antecedent... fairly straightfoward logical interpretation once the required end date is clarified: neither one has survived the other, to date. So this market and its dual "does DvD survive Chomsky as of now" both resolve false. But also yes, the market would have been improved by including the details in the title and/or description.

@Eliza Agreed

@EvanDaniel it’s not stated as a conditional. To me it’s similar to a sentence involving definite description that fails to refer (false presupposition), the truth value of which is a contentious question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definite_description

Russell would say it’s false, Strawson would say it’s neither true nor false.