28/11 Predation Markets @ Medialab Matadero OpenLab, Madrid

Predation Markets
In an era where the mechanics of truth are increasingly outsourced to digital infrastructures, this talk will examine the disconnect between the promise of contemporary networked technology as a way to agree upon, verify, price, and perhaps even create “truths”.

We will chart the shift from the early “cypherpunk” aspirations of algorithmic objectivity and liberation through cryptography, to the predatory nature of predictionmarketstoday, which weaponise truth and create perverse incentives for insider trading, assassination, and maybe even apocalypse? To counter this hyperstitional drift, I will propose a series of mitigations and design principles to reclaim truth as an epistemic quality rather than a political weapon.

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