The Devil Is in the Verb
Superforecaster Ryan Adler on what Polymarket’s Venezuela kerfuffle reveals about “simple” forecasting questions
Writing questions is harder than it looks. For simple things, like run-of-the-mill economic data (when the government isn’t shut down), it is rather easy. However, we do not live in a simple world, and framing forecasting questions for highly relevant things can require extremely methodical work. Having written well north of 4,000 forecasting questions and forecast on hundreds more, I’ve suffered through every mistake imaginable (and probably more to come).
After President Trump arranged for Nicolas Maduro to receive free housing in New York (Mayor Mamdani should be proud), Polymarket found itself in a bit of a pickle of its own making.
Will the U.S. invade Venezuela by [date]?
It’s a simple question, a short sentence, and something that has been on a whole lot of minds in recent months.
Straightforward enough? At first glance, it might seem black-and-white. Folks at Polymarket apparently thought so, but they were quite mistaken. Many market participants assumed that the US operation constituted an invasion, and Polymarket has concluded otherwise.
As is often the case for a forecasting question, which is functionally identical to an event contract, the devil is in the operative verb: invade.
In what we at Good Judgment would call the resolution criteria, Polymarket attempted to expound a bit on what would constitute the US invading Venezuela:
This market will resolve to “Yes” if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”.
Left only with this language, I have to say the traders who think they should get paid out based on the events surrounding Operation Absolute Resolve have a very strong case to make. Was this a military offensive? Dozens of dead Cuban intelligence officers would say so, and I don’t think anyone would claim otherwise. Did that offensive “intend to establish control over any portion of Venezuela” (emphasis added)? Absolutely. Maduro was in a building, which is on land. According to all reporting, US forces landed on Venezuelan territory and clearly prevented Maduro from escaping the structure he and his wife were in. A perimeter was established. What’s in that perimeter? A portion of Venezuela.
Sure, this would have been a very small chunk of Venezuela, and the control established (intention for doing so is implicit) was of a very short duration. However, Polymarket didn’t take the time to add modifiers that would have excluded the operation that we saw.
As an undocumented attorney (got my JD back in the day, but never practiced), one of my first classes was on contracts. While there are many nuances in interpretation, enforceability, and public policy from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, there is one thing that controls a contract: its text. Here, Polymarket may have intended for its language to mean something different than the seizure of Maduro, but that’s not what they wrote in the contract they offered to the market.
Mistakes will be made, but this, in my opinion and experience, was an unforced error.
* Ryan Adler is a Superforecaster, GJ managing director, and leader of Good Judgment’s question team