I really, really, really dislike Harry Enten, the annoyingly hyperkinetic weirdo on CNN who stands in front of an image board and waves at poll numbers and tells us how important they are. I despise all the poll nonsense on the news media — learn to talk about issues and policy rather than the horserace. Now it’s gotten even worse, because he’s not babbling about legitimate, credible polls, it’s all about numbers extracted from prediction markets, which are also paying the networks for promotion.
Since December, CNN has featured Kalshi in a segment called “The Odds” at least 115 times. In these segments, Harry Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, frequently suggests that Kalshi predictions are more accurate than other sources. While polling relies on volunteers, Enten repeatedly reminds CNN viewers that prediction markets are driven by people who “put their money where their mouth is.”
On January 7, Enten highlighted that, in six days, the odds on Kalshi that the United States would buy part of Greenland by the end of Trump’s first term increased from 12% to 36%. Enten said this was proof that “the people putting their money where their mouth is” are “absolutely taking this seriously.”
“Whoa… way up there now to 36%,” Enten exclaimed. “A tripling in less than a week. My goodness gracious.”
Wishful thinking by gullible people is not evidence.
The good news is that some people are trying to take down these corrupt companies.
On Monday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a total ban on futures trading platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Tuesday to prevent the ban from going into place on Aug. 1, with the CFTC arguing its authority supersedes the state’s ability to regulate futures trading. Notably, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor for Kalshi and has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm.
You can tell that Kalshi and Polymarket are not to be trusted just by looking at the scumbags who are investing in it. They’re parasites all the way through. It makes me suspicious of the Young Turks that they are also taking Polymarket money.
These are just barely legal gambling sites. Let’s making them illegal.
P.S. There is no evidence that we are imminently going to get evidence that aliens exist.
Kalshi and Polymarket have two kinds of users – those who are gullible, and those who have inside information.
So: does someone out there have inside information on the existence of aliens? I have seen the evidence released, and it is not convincing. Furthermore, the people pushing it’s aliens looked at the same evidence and found it convincing, in the process proving that they do not understand simple concepts such as parallax and bokeh. Which tells me: if there is additional evidence that has not been released, I have no reason to think the alien-pushers have interpreted it correctly.
Since these are prediction markets, they should be amenable to simple scoring for how accurate they are.
Which has been done already. Here is one example.
The two largest ones, get some right and some wrong.
Polymarket is 67%
Kalshi is 78%
What is lacking here is a control group.
How accurate at forecasting are 5 university professors or 5 crystal ball mediums or 5 whoevers that claim to be able to forecast the future by using knowledge, common sense, or super powers, compared to the betting market ones.
Dose Enten know that most gamblers lose? That’s why casinos* and betting sites make money.
*Unless it’s run by Trump.
The bet isn’t whether aliens exist. It’s whether the US declares that aliens exist. Which grifters can actually do at will.
Yes the sites should be banned but the currently leadership are making bank on them, and that’s all they care about.