Basement Whatever

As Scott Adams says, our brains were not built to understand reality, our brains evolved for reproduction. Human brains don’t innately understand statistics and are designed for storytelling. People with widely different views (a Catholic and a Buddhist, say) can hang out together with no problem. In short, we don’t have a strong model on reality. So how can we tell who has the best model?

The only real way is to bet on it. Ask someone to make predictions, and see how good they are at making them. This gives you a better way to test someone’s model of reality than the story they tell you.

The website Kalshi allows you to track global predictions. Over time, presumably, we’ll learn just how good a wide number of thinkers who need to put actual money on the line are at understanding consensus reality. This may potentially allow you to “predict the future” based on current predictions by people with strong, proven maps of how reality actually is. We’ll also see if bad actors can manipulate reality by contributing heavily to prediction markets in their favor.

This is regulated, institutional-grade infrastructure for trading reality itself. Building on the foundation that Polymarket established globally, Kalshi brings prediction markets into the regulated US financial system.

It will remain to be seen, but if the predictions match the future, we might be seeing the best tool we have for predicting the future.