[HN Gopher] Betting on the Pope was the original prediction market
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Betting on the Pope was the original prediction market
Author : nodumbideas
Score : 116 points
Date : 2025-03-07 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nodumbideas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nodumbideas.com)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Father Guido Sarducci: "Find the Popes in the Pizza" contest:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3mdp5n/find_the_pope...
|
| Spoiler warning: This contest only involves finding pictures of
| the Pope. No Popes were harmed by the actual or transubstantial
| production of Poperoni meat.
|
| Deep Dish Question: Would putting pineapples on pizza whose crust
| is made of sacramental bread be considered host desecration?
| perihelions wrote:
| You _say_ there 's no pizza transubstantiation, but I see
| cheeses all over
| mightyham wrote:
| Everyone has their own tastes, but I personally don't
| understand the appeal of SNL. Even skits that are so called
| "classics" don't strike me as all that funny. Maybe it's a
| generational thing.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Thank you for announcing you lack of understanding. I will
| update my priors. I was hoping somebody wouldn't find it
| funny, because that makes it even funnier to me!
| IvyMike wrote:
| This guy is in contention for pope, and he's definitely got an
| edge in this contest.
|
| https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/cardinals/pierbattista-...
| samdung wrote:
| Unrelated. Just finished watching the series 'The Young Pope'.
| What a visual spectacle it was.
| curl-up wrote:
| Strongly recommend The Great Beauty from the same director
| (Paolo Sorrentino), IMO his greatest work by far.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Went through a series of all the popes once, and man was there
| some bad ones:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_VI
|
| _"Stephen is chiefly remembered in connection with his conduct
| towards the remains of Pope Formosus. The rotting corpse of
| Formosus was exhumed and put on trial, before an unwilling synod
| of the Roman clergy, in the so-called Cadaver Synod in January
| 897. Pressure from the Spoleto contingent and Stephen 's fury
| with Formosus probably precipitated this extraordinary event.[4]
| With the corpse propped up on a throne, a deacon was appointed to
| answer for the deceased pontiff. During the trial, Formosus's
| corpse was condemned for performing the functions of a bishop
| when he had been deposed and for accepting the papacy while he
| was the bishop of Porto, among other revived charges that had
| been levelled against him in the strife during the pontificate of
| John VIII. The corpse was found guilty, stripped of its sacred
| vestments, deprived of three fingers of its right hand (the
| blessing fingers), clad in the garb of a layman, and quickly
| buried; it was then re-exhumed and thrown in the Tiber. All
| ordinations performed by Formosus were annulled."_
|
| The Papacy is lit.
|
| Edit:
|
| _"... the scandal ended in Stephen 's imprisonment and his death
| by strangulation that summer."_
|
| The Papacy is _fucking_ lit.
| wil421 wrote:
| Sounds like a great Jeopardy topic. "I'll take Bad Popes for
| 1000 Trebek."
|
| Is there a bad Pope list?
| bloomingkales wrote:
| You can start here:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum_obscurum
|
| _The era is seen as one of the lowest points of the history
| of the papal office._
| Luc wrote:
| There's a classic book!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Popes
| elSidCampeador wrote:
| For anyone, who, like me, wanted to know about how this story
| truly ended:
|
| > Pope Theodore II (Latin: Theodorus II; 840 - December 897)
| was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States for twenty
| days in December 897. His short reign occurred during a period
| of partisan strife... His main act as pope was to annul the
| recent Cadaver Synod, therefore reinstating the acts and
| ordinations of Pope Formosus, which had themselves been
| annulled by Pope Stephen VI. He also had the body of Formosus
| recovered from the river Tiber and reburied with honour.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Theodore_II
| bloomingkales wrote:
| How the hell did you 1up my very particular historical
| tidbit?
| mephos wrote:
| Great article.
|
| A couple weeks ago, on a flight, I watched the movie Conclave
| (2024) which is about the process of selecting the Pope, in a
| modern context. I thought it was surprisingly good, but felt like
| a warning call for the next papal conclave as it illustrated how
| the power some of these individuals face can corrupt. Fascinating
| to think how this process would have played out in 16th Century
| Italy.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| You should check out the voting process for electing the Doge
| of Venice:
|
| https://www.theballotboy.com/electing-the-doge
| mr_00ff00 wrote:
| This is a crazy process. Although I feel like I am a bit
| confused.
|
| When they say "reduced by lot" then mean by a lottery? By
| that same original boy or something else?
|
| They also talked about needing approval from electors, I
| assume that was from the previous small pool. Can't exactly
| determine who they mean.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Best not to overthink think. It's the best random number
| generator they thought they had. Even ours suck.
|
| They just wanted a member of the Aristocrat to be in charge
| is the point. An inauguration validated with whatever
| appears like merit (but the whole thing is rigged since
| only one type can ever win - the aristocrat (the entire
| pool is aristocrats)).
|
| Self selected group :)
|
| Have fun with Doge.
| Exoristos wrote:
| It was gratuitously complex the better to hide sleight-of-
| hand by the powers of the day.
| vessenes wrote:
| There's some fairly deep statistical analysis out there on
| the Doge voting. To my memory it was only subverted once,
| leading to some changes. The analysis I remember concludes
| they have like one more round than needed to meet goals of
| the voting in terms of fairness, representation and
| difficulty of capture. Anyway, it's a very interesting bit of
| voting history that lasted a long time.
| ohgr wrote:
| Sounds easier than getting work done in a corporate who got
| an agile consultancy in.
| nodumbideas wrote:
| It's a really interesting point; the postwar conclaves have
| arguably been some of the least (openly?) political in a
| history. The next one will probably be more politicized than
| the last one. You can imagine lots of commentary from non-
| Catholics on who they think "should win," tied to political or
| cultural ideas.
|
| In some ways this is new, but it's also possibly a reversion to
| the mean on how it's worked historically? One difference is
| that in the 16th century, the impact of the Pope on day to day
| life was higher (at least in Catholic Europe).
| antognini wrote:
| One of the reasons that there were historically so many
| machinations around the election of the Pope was that the
| Pope was not only a spiritual leader but a temporal ruler as
| well. The Pope was the monarch of the Papal States in central
| Italy (along with a number of other territories throughout
| Europe that changed hands more frequently). So it was a
| position of immense political power and wealth.
|
| Starting in the 18th century the Papal States began to be
| chipped away by European powers, and this culminated in Pope
| Pius IX losing all control political control of the Papal
| States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Since then the
| papacy's temporal power has been limited to the Vatican City,
| along with the moral weight of the position.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > in the 16th century, the impact of the Pope on day to day
| life was higher
|
| Not so. The mass media have instantly made every sneeze of
| the pope common knowledge, or common fake news. In prior
| centuries, the pope's prominence in the consciousness of
| daily life was low. He was a remote figure. You wouldn't hear
| of his death for weeks.
| eadmund wrote:
| > You can imagine lots of commentary from non-Catholics on
| who they think "should win," tied to political or cultural
| ideas.
|
| I'm not Catholic, but I do think that it makes sense for the
| next pope to be one.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The first season of the show Borgia: Faith and Fear has an
| episode or two about the papal conclave that happened after
| Innocent VIII died, Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) ends up
| winning the election and there's plenty of backdoor dealing
| going on.
| cguess wrote:
| If you can, try to rewatch it on a proper screen. The clothing
| and sets are incredible and the costume design and production
| design were nominated for an Oscar. It really deserves to be
| seen large.
| torcete wrote:
| I saw it on a cinema, and it is truly worth watching it on a
| big screen.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Tangentially related but I watched a Wendover video on The
| Vatican[1] yesterday and it helps explain the political side of
| the papacy.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zQ8cFF3DG8
| agubelu wrote:
| To add to this, if anyone's interested in the history and
| geopolitics of the Vatican and understands Spanish, here's an
| excellent podcast that goes way more in depth about the
| topic:
|
| https://youtu.be/apCBwjxaLO4
| hippich wrote:
| I know nothing about this stuff. What kind of power a pope has
| that it is so competitive? I enjoyed the movie, but no idea
| what would be motivation of the people there.
| mbg721 wrote:
| The Pope directs the spiritual priorities of his Bishops and
| thereby all Catholics, a lot of people. He's not going to be
| able to say "Kill, fornicate, and steal now!" without losing
| all credibility, but he can say, "We're going to ask for
| contributions monthly for X good cause." There's also money
| and diplomatic effort to be directed to dioceses around the
| world.
| andrepd wrote:
| He's gonna be the leader of the oldest continuously
| functioning organisation in the world, with 1.5b (nominal)
| members.
|
| It's a big deal x)
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| What makes you think that movie is an accurate representation
| of the papal selection process? I watched it too and while the
| videography is amazing, the plot of the movie is clearly
| dictated by having an agenda rather than accurately trying to
| portray reality.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Those who say film doesn't influence popular attitudes
| underestimate how many people treat film as a source of
| knowledge. Horrifying to realize.
| lenzm wrote:
| All sorts of works of fiction have been sources of
| knowledge for much longer than film has been around.
| Aesop's fables and parables in the Bible are intentful
| examples. I don't find this horrifying.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Yes, but market making was difficult.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Wait, does this mean Polymarket is also an assassination market?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
|
| This may be an obvious thing that everyone else has caught onto,
| but... if I were to place a bet against someone dying this year
| (say it was someone powerful), wouldn't I essentially be offering
| a reward for someone to prove me wrong and make that death
| happen?
|
| And isn't that exactly what's happening when people are betting
| on a new pope in 2025? Doesn't that heavily incentivize some
| violent individual to take that bet and commit murder?
| barbazoo wrote:
| Maybe similar to life insurance re suicide?
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| With life insurance, they investigate and won't pay out if
| they discover it was a suicide.
|
| Is there any similar mechanism with Polymarket for detecting,
| shall we say, unethical bets?
| wahern wrote:
| In the US life insurance is required to cover suicide,
| though an initial exclusion period of up to 2 years
| (depending on state) is permitted.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea. For all I know that's true in Canada
| too, I'm not an expert on Canadian insurance law, but I
| was under the impression that suicide was never covered
| anywhere. Thanks for correcting me!
| wahern wrote:
| It's not something insurers, healthcare professionals, or
| most anyone else is keen to advertise. It's even
| difficult to Google as most of the immediate results will
| be for mental health crisis resources. But AFAIU as
| suicide came to be understood as a consequence of mental
| illness, and given that the beneficiaries are no less
| innocent than if someone died by accident or cancer,
| courts began to favor and then insurance regulators began
| to mandate coverage.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Imagine any business decision that would strongly benefit from
| e.g. J.D. Vance _not_ becoming the acting president and Trump
| remaining in his place for the rest of the year /term. Does
| making such a decision "essentially be offering a reward for
| someone to prove you wrong", those someone's being your
| business competitors/rivals?
|
| Or you could even dial the timeline back to right before the
| last elections, where this question could literally be about
| the Republicans literally losing their candidate due to sudden
| expiration.
|
| My point is, if someone sees that you hedge financial well-
| being on e.g. you country not slipping into the civil war over
| the next few years, and orchestrates exactly that to profit
| themselves -- this is not _your_ moral failing, it 's theirs,
| and even the "well, you kinda tempted them, technically"
| argument is bogus.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I don't think those are the same thing?
|
| For example, I'm in Canada. There's a trade war going on.
| Every business in Canada is now having to hedge their bets
| for whether and how long and how bad the trade war is going
| to be. And we all know the trade war is being driven by one
| person. So yes, "what are the odds of a change in who is
| running the country?" is part of that risk assessment.
|
| That's not the same thing as saying, "here's $100k if
| something were to happen to the man in the funny hat".
|
| Technically, you could construe both as hedging your bets.
| But in the first scenario I'm just making a decision for my
| business. In the other, I'm offering a reward to make it
| happen.
|
| Now, that being said, I could see the water getting murky for
| a publicly traded company that positions itself in such a way
| that it would truly benefit from such an event, because then
| a violent member of the public could buy their stock and
| benefit financially from commitment that violence. But that's
| not what we're talking about with polymarket.
|
| Polymarket is all about tying a specific financial outcome to
| a specific real world event that people could choose to
| influence. It incentivizes outcomes. Some outcomes would be
| hard to influence this way. For example, I don't think any
| bet of any size would influence who would win an election.
| But if the bet was "It would be terrible if someone did X,
| I'm betting $$$ that no one will", then the only question is
| whether the $$$ is worth it to someone with the ability to
| commit X.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Just scale your argument up, you don't think it's worth it
| to someone to influence an election? What's all that money
| for then?
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I'm not questioning whether it would be worth it. I'm
| questioning how that would work, and am very much open to
| being wrong here. I just don't see how it would work.
|
| For example... let's say I bet a trillion dollars that
| the Canadian Communist Party (a party on the extreme
| fringes that few Canadians even realize exists) would NOT
| win the election. How would that incentive lead to them
| winning? What could anyone do to make that reality happen
| in order to claim the money?
|
| That's not to say there aren't other ways to use money to
| influence an election. Of course there is. But you need
| to spend it in the run-up to the election, not offer it
| as a prize afterwards.
|
| Am I being naive? (A: Probably. Wouldn't be the first
| time.)
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Throw a baby in water and it can swim, no naivete
| anywhere.
|
| 1) Putting out a bet that a vulnerable person will take
| is immoral. But that's not what we are discussing.
|
| 2) How would putting out such a bet, a call option, lead
| to hedging?
|
| 3) This can turn into a long ass discussion that I'm not
| sure you wanna go on.
| hattmall wrote:
| The largest volume of short puts ever purchased on DJT /
| TMTG (Truth Social / Trump Media Stock) was made shortly
| before the assassination attempt at the Butler PA rally.
| The investment firm Austin Private Wealth, however
| attributed it to a clerical error of a 3rd party that
| accidentally multiplied their transaction by 10,000. Oops.
| superturkey650 wrote:
| I don't believe you're being against a specific person, so you
| don't have a 1-1 incentive based on the bet you're placing.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I guess what I'm asking is whether there is anything stopping
| you from betting against a specific person.
|
| I'm being vague because I don't want to put the idea out
| there about any specific individual.
| Exoristos wrote:
| Most human beings organically find murder too abhorrent to
| contemplate or I should say plan and follow through with.
| Modern entertainment media may be twisting your perception
| here.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The original insider info is here
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Related, a great new video just dropped as an intro to prediction
| markets:
|
| https://youtu.be/ngX1nIvnMOM?si=QykC_5gSObT8o8e7
| Starlord2048 wrote:
| 500 years ago, betting on the Pope was punishable by
| excommunication. Today, crypto-powered prediction markets are
| placing odds on the next conclave. Have we come full circle, or
| has technology fundamentally changed the ethics of speculation?
| Should there be limits to what we can bet on, or is "information
| price discovery" an absolute good?
|
| Are decentralized prediction markets a net positive for
| transparency, or are they just incentivizing bad behavior?
| cxie wrote:
| I've been thinking about prediction market designs that could
| preserve information discovery benefits while minimizing harm -
| maybe through delayed settlement periods, anti-manipulation
| mechanisms, or separating financial stakes from informational
| ones.
|
| As web3 and DeFi make these markets more accessible and
| resistant to regulation, should we be building more guardrails
| into the protocols themselves? Or is this an unsolvable tension
| in market design?
| erelong wrote:
| Didn't read this article but one of them I think said the 1917
| Code of Canon Law removed the excommunication for this kind of
| gambling.
|
| Gambling itself within reason I think was not condemned
| ("Gambling" in Catholic encyclopedia):
| https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06375b.htm
| pr337h4m wrote:
| The markets on Polymarket for Xi and Putin's successors are going
| to be 100x bigger in terms of both market size and as a topic of
| conversation.
| anonu wrote:
| Similar thread from a few days ago
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43151152
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Betting on the Pope was the original prediction market; 500
| years before Polymarket, the Vatican fought to stop gambling on
| papal affairs._
|
| just to be clear, the article offers no evidence that there was
| not prior gambling art than the papal enclaves. cockfighting,
| bullfighting, gladiators, horseracing, was there no organized
| betting? in terms of prediction markets specifically, once there
| is organized betting, did it never extend to "current events"?
|
| just as a slightly topical aside, the market for "oil drilling"
| is mathematically equivalent to a (stock) options market. it
| doesn't take much for markets to uncover probability and
| statistics.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I feel like these sorts of turns-of-phrase, like "_blank_ was
| the original _blank_", are increasingly used like memes without
| any real thought of whether they are make sense or are correct.
| People are afraid to write without ornamentation, regardless of
| whether it adds anything meaningful. It's added to meet some
| sort of perceived standard of "good writing", in an effort to
| stand out from the crowd.
| ohgr wrote:
| There was sports betting going on far far before Jesus showed
| up. The Romans allowed it and the Holy Roman Empire and the
| catholics let it carry on.
|
| Also dice games were popular for private betting.
| erelong wrote:
| > "New Pope in 2025?"
|
| Kind of a different topic but there's a growing number of people
| who identify as sedevacantist who don't believe Catholics have
| had a pope since 1958, since the papal claimants since then seen
| to contradict prior Catholic teachings
|
| For example Vatican 2 taught in Dignitatis humanae:
|
| > This Vatican synod declares that the human person has a right
| to religious freedom ... within due limits
|
| http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/vatican2/...
|
| Obviously if I just said that I thought it was fine to steal from
| you unprovoked because my "religion" gives me the freedom to do
| so, this would come in conflict with the normal laws against
| stealing. Thus religious freedom has clear "limits"; Vatican 2
| doesn't define where these "due" limits are and is ambiguous,
| opening the door to all kinds of confusion and contradiction.
|
| Past teaching was clearer that (note that the proposition stated
| is considered to be "condemned" or false):
|
| > Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, # 78: "Hence in certain
| regions of Catholic name, it has been laudably sanctioned by law
| that men immigrating there be allowed to have public exercises of
| any form of worship of their own." - Condemned.[58]
|
| However it's thought by some that once it becomes apparent these
| contradictions exist, it will lead to a kind of reorganization of
| things and an election of a forthcoming pope... and the issue of
| gambling will present itself again.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| According to the Wikipedia there's even a weird subset who view
| Benedict's resignation as the point of separation (not Vatican
| 2).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism
|
| People get up to the wildest ideas. Thanks for sharing
| meepmeepinator wrote:
| Reading about those 16th-century papal betting scandals really
| makes you wonder if we've learned anything. Back then, gossip and
| gambling nearly derailed a holy process; now we've got Reddit and
| crypto traders betting on everything from Popes to presidents.
| Some say it's harmless fun and even a smart way to predict the
| future, while others worry it encourages bad behavior or just
| feels wrong. Where do we draw the line on betting for things that
| really matter? Is it a clever use of crowd wisdom, or are we
| turning serious life events into a game? I'm genuinely curious
| how people here feel about it.
| protocolture wrote:
| So when I started the papal betting pool at my catholic high
| school all those years ago I was actually practicing and
| respecting history.
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