This is a funnier and more active way to engage with the news.

Rather than passively listening/reading to what others think about the world, trying to predict something forces me to think about it, identify the information I miss and look for it. It is also good to fix my assumptions when I start to see others betting the contrary and I have to figure out why.

The gamified rewards are also quite addictive. It is nice to see the line going up.

The reason why I started to use it a few weeks ago was because I wanted to improve my forecasting skills, but it seems these two additional incentives that came on top are much more motivating in reality.

Addictive video game

low friction calibration practice. It's nice to have other people judge resolution criteria, all I have to do is say "number too high/low" and spend mana.

I haven't found it very useful for predicting stuff that matters to me. Probably because stuff that matters to me is too niche or personal to expect the level of engagement that would be useful. And creating markets is something of a commitment.

So for making predictions about whatever, I prefer manifold, but for setting up lots of predictions about a specific topic or predictions that matter to me, I prefer fatebook.

Another reason is the community. Mabifold has some things in common with other social media platforms but the userbase isn't terrible. If someone has an interest in prediction markets that's a sign that they also share some of my other interests and values. And posting here is more casual and less of a commitment than in more serious forums like EA or LW.

Manifold is how I figure out what matters in the news.

Mobile game

Get the daily streak bonus for today

I think learning to assign % probabilities to events is a useful skill to train, and manifold helps me to train it - for free!

But that's more of an after-the-fact rationalization, I mainly find it fun to see number go up, and I enjoy being correct.

Without engaging brain.

Being able to see raw prediction % for certain events is a genuinely new and novel concept. Polymarket is too serious, Manifold is friendlier and has more interesting markets.

Today: part habit, part curiosity, part line go up

In general: can also be if there's something in particular that I want to know about (especially re politics), or if I have a question I think would be interesting to create a market on

News, entertainment, and personal goals/motivation

Addiction

Mild source of entertainment

The main thing is that being able to predict the future is a useful skill. Improving my sense of when I can't is also useful.

Secondarily, Manifold also works as a supplementary news app. I have found out about events several times via an app notification that some market I bet on has had a big swing.

I started using it out of curiosity / for fun after reading about it on tpot. Stuck with it for about a month and won some mana but got bored and gave up on it for a while. Recently I’ve started using it again as a productivity/motivation tool.

Sometimes habit or see if new questions about a market I run were posted. Sometimes some upcoming event I wanna see predictions about or create a market about. Previously it was more for linegoup joy. Alas, line go up no more 😟

As far as I can tell, my #1 reason is I am hoping the site will let me ask a question and then tell me about something that hasn't happened yet.

The second one is I seem to have mostly followed along with the general argument like, "knowing things about the future is better than not knowing things about the future" so it seems like a good thing to put a little bit of energy into.

For FUNNNN