When a father uses a prediction market to alleviate parenting anxiety.

Author: Polyfactual

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Last Tuesday morning, I stood in the pickup line at the elementary school, my hand on my son's backpack, frozen in place. Just this past weekend, yet another school shooting had taken over the headlines.

When he excitedly ran into the school building, I felt that familiar tightness in my chest—a heart-wrenching feeling, as if with their growing independence in this hostile world, anything could happen.

On the way to work by car, I played an audiobook I was listening to: “Say Nothing,” a historical account of the Northern Ireland conflict - a thirty-year period of anti-colonial violence from 1969 to the late 1990s, during which 186 children were killed.

Northern Ireland was a real war zone during certain periods, with the streets filled with explosions, gunfire, and military presence. The book details the tragic plight of those innocent victims, with the most chilling being the children who were accidentally harmed or even killed. However, when you actually calculate the data, it turns out that during that entire horrific period, the risk of a child being killed each year was about 1.2 out of every 100,000 children.

Participating in prediction markets has activated the analytical part of my brain, allowing me to tackle problems that once seemed unsolvable. I calculated data on school shootings in the United States.

Currently, the annual risk of K-12 students dying from school shootings is about 0.06 per 100,000 students. My son—who will be attending public school in 2025—faces a statistical risk lower than that of children attending school in Belfast in 1975. In other words, during the Northern Ireland conflict, the probability of a child being violently killed was 20 times the probability of today's American students dying from school shootings.

This realization did not make school shootings any less tragic. Each shooting is an absolute disaster, a failure of society to protect children. But it brought an unexpected effect: it allowed me to let my son live freely.

Anxiety Trap

Regarding the parenting issues in the information age, there is one thing that no one tells you: your brain is inherently bad at assessing risks. Our brains are naturally wired to react to vivid, emotional threats—those tragic events that come with breaking news alerts and constant updates from Twitter/X. However, we are not good at properly weighing these threats against base rates and statistical probabilities.

This is exactly where the predictive market mindset comes into play.

Prediction markets operate by aggregating information from multiple sources and requiring people to place real bets on their beliefs. They excel at cutting through noise, as they punish emotional reasoning and reward accuracy.

You cannot maintain a position in the prediction market solely based on your feelings; you need to think from the perspective of actual probabilities and set aside emotions. I am not suggesting that we all become cold and unfeeling calculating machines regarding children's safety issues.

What I suggest is to adopt a framework of probabilistic thinking—this psychological model that enables prediction markets to function effectively—could become a genuine tool for improving life.

Deconstruct Probability

After sending the kids to school that morning, I began to apply this framework of thinking to more anxieties. Not to deny them, but to bring them back to a reasonable size.

I drive more frequently than the average person, so I checked the relevant data: the annual risk of death due to car accidents for Americans is about 12 out of every 100,000 people. This is indeed one of the main causes of death, and the risk is clearly significant. However, one thing I hadn't considered before: when I adjust to being someone who focuses on driving and doesn't live stream on TikTok while driving, my personal risk decreases significantly.

There are more factors: I don’t drink and drive, I always fasten my seatbelt properly, I don’t text while driving, and my car is equipped with modern safety features that my parents' generation never had. Each factor further reduces risk.

By calculating the data, I realized that although driving does carry risks, my specific risk situation is much lower than what the news suggests. More importantly, it helped me clarify what truly matters: the behavioral factors that I can control. I cannot completely eliminate risk, but I can approach it with caution.

The mindset of prediction markets raises a key question: what should I really pay attention to among all the available information?

Decision-making under uncertainty

This way of thinking is especially powerful in major life decisions. Should we move for a job opportunity? Should our child skip a grade? Should I try experimental ketamine treatment?

Traditional advice is to list pros and cons or “go with your gut.” However, prediction market thinking offers a more structured approach: estimate the probabilities of different outcomes, assign rough values to these outcomes, and then look at the recommendations from the expected value calculations.

When my wife considered switching to a lower-paying job that might be more fulfilling, we were in a dilemma.

Then we start to break it down step by step:

⇨ What is the probability that she becomes happier? (We estimate it to be 70%)

⇨ How happy will she become? Measured on a scale that we can roughly quantify.

⇨ What is the probability of financial pressure leading to serious problems? (We estimate it to be 20%) • How severe will these problems be?

Through this analysis process alone, even before reaching a final conclusion, it has already clarified our thinking. We realized that we have overly focused on financial risks, as they are very specific, while underestimating the factor of satisfaction, as it is more vague.

My predictive market thinking forces us to clarify our assumptions. We made changes, which can sometimes be difficult, but it is the right choice.

Limitations of the framework

I need to make one thing clear: this is not about simplifying life into a spreadsheet. However, many struggles in life can be seen as exaggerated threats or opportunities that we overlook due to our miscalibration of risk.

Probabilistic thinking does not mean indifference or calculation; it means being honest about what we actually know and what we fear. It means distinguishing between “this feels scary” and “this is actually dangerous.”

Daily Life Prediction Market

The actual situation is as follows:

Before making a decision: Don't ask “What should I do?” Instead, ask “What are the possible outcomes? What is the probability of each outcome?” Write them down and assign rough percentages to them. You may find areas where your thinking is not clear.

When feeling anxious: Ask yourself what evidence would change your assessment. If there is no evidence that would change it (for example, whether the risk is 0.001% or 10%, you are equally worried), then what you are facing is not calibrated worry, but widespread anxiety that needs to be addressed with different methods.

Regarding recurring concerns: Record them. I started to document the specific situations I worried about regarding my child. A week later, I found that none of those vivid scenarios I was worried about actually happened, but indeed some things I had never worried about occurred (like injuries on the playground, or a new behavior issue I hadn't anticipated). This didn't completely stop my worrying, but it did allow me to view the world more objectively.

When conflicts arise with a partner: instead of arguing whether something is “too dangerous” or “completely safe”, assign it a number. For example: what are the outcomes of clinical ketamine treatment? How many people in the study group had bad experiences, and how many experienced complete mental rebirth and relief from mental health issues? Gather the data and then make a decision.

Living in distribution

The deepest insight gained from this way of thinking is not about any single decision, but rather accepting that we live in a probabilistic universe. James Clerk Maxwell once said, “The true logic of the world is in the calculation of probabilities.”

Bad things will happen, and good things will happen. Most things will fall somewhere in between. You cannot achieve zero risk through optimization, and trying to do so may cause you to miss out on the full texture of life.

When I think of my parents during the Northern Ireland conflict, who sent their children to school every day despite the real violence around them, I don't think they were being negligent. They made a rational choice: life must go on, and the alternative – keeping the children locked up at home out of fear – is a different form of tragedy.

The thinking provided by prediction markets ultimately offers not certainty, but clarity. Not fearlessness, but targeted concerns. Not the elimination of risk, but the wise distinction of which dangers should change our behavior and which should not.

I will still feel worried when sending my son to school, perhaps forever. But now, when my chest starts to tighten, I can pause and ask myself: Is this fear proportional to the actual risk, or is my brain doing what it usually does - catastrophizing, looking for threats, trying to protect what I love most?

Usually the latter. And I am slowly learning to let him walk into the school gate easily, while also making my own mood a bit lighter.