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Why You Can Not Allow Nerds to Congregate with Austin Chen
Manifold:
The Taco Party:
In this engaging conversation, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Austin Chen, co-founder of the prediction market platform Manifold, to discuss the upcoming Manifest conference, the newly launched grant-making entity Manifund, and the unique community that has formed around these initiatives. Austin shares his insights on the diverse group of intellectuals, tech enthusiasts, and "degenerates" that make up the Manifold user base, and how the platform's open, decentralized approach sets it apart from other prediction markets. The hosts and guest also delve into the challenges of creating vibrant social events and communities, the importance of taking initiative, and the potential for Manifund to fill a gap in the current intellectual landscape.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. We are very excited today to be joined by Austin Chen. He is one of the co founders of the prediction market Manifold, though now he is transitioning to work on Manifund, which is their sort of independent grant making entity, which is so excited.
But what he's doing right now as he's transitioning is Prepping and ramping up for basically the conference of the year for us. We're really excited for it aside from natalism conference, which we're also very excited for, because per natalism, right? But last year was the first ever manifest conference.
This is the flagship conference and the one only of manifold. And it was one of the best gatherings we've ever been to in terms of the California people in terms of execution. So you're planning for this we wanted to bring you on to talk about this, to talk about manifold, to talk about mana fund.
And I just wanted to kick this off with
Malcolm Collins: why? No, hold on. We got to kick it off with a good question. Okay. I think that
Austin Chen: was a great question. The
Malcolm Collins: good question is [00:01:00] around the betting pool that was put around when a a sex party would form at last year's event. Oh my God. Orgy.
Yes. Yeah. Can you speak to that? What happened there?
Austin Chen: So this is I think an outgrowth of Manifold's like very like libertarian philosophy. To take like very many steps back about what is special about Manifold, right? We're a prediction market platform where anyone can create any question.
And this was basically from the very beginning, we want it to be a place where instead of the more standard platforms, Metacliss, PolyMarket, Kaoshi, which all have like prediction markets or forecasts. But all of their forecasts and prediction market was like gatekept. They're like approved by the moderators of the platform.
We were like, we don't want this. We want more of a decentralized, like anyone can ask any question kind of system. So I think. Even from the very early days, we had a lot more of the like out there, sketchy, like raunchy degenerate, like crowd of people, but also a lot of people who are like, just very interested in prediction markets for their own sake, like prediction market nerds.
When you put those two together, you get like all kinds of weird questions Will there be an orgy at [00:02:00] Manifest? And I think the New York Times famously covered this maybe in a little bit more Like depth than I would have hoped because you know me i'm like i'm so excited to be on the New York Times Except that my name is now associated with this orgy that happens But yeah, I don't know if there's like too much more about that than what they cover.
It was like somebody who was one of our users was like, there's a bunch of like really spicy things happening. The like rationalist EA crowd is famous for the very loose, like norms on like sexuality, like polyamory, that kind of thing. Maybe there'll be an orgy. It's a thing that has probably ever happened befor
Published on 1 year, 7 months ago