"The more mature version of this is where people are betting money against each other inside a common market, forming a prediction market, and the places where prices settle then become Civilization's way of knowing what Civilization knows."
"If this project were running inside Civilization, there would already be a prediction market over what its outcomes were, like whether we succeed in our technological revolution, or start another war, and every time something interesting happened, the prices would shift, and that would reflect Civilization knowing more about our project's prospects. Or, I mean, in this case, it would be a secret government prediction market, but then that's the government's way of knowing secret things."
"People who make massive amounts of money on prediction markets by being righter than everyone are incredibly rare in Civilization, and they're respected about as much any other kind of person who exists. A Legislator is significantly less respectable than Nemamel, who beat the prediction markets her whole life to the point where she could only trade anonymously because nobody would knowingly bet against her. Nobody takes that name any more, she owns it now, it's hers forever. There's nine Legislators at any given time, and there were five people like Nemamel over the course of Civilization's remembered history."