Misleading title

With these criteria what would this resolve to for Ukraine?

@mariopasquato As far as google tells me, the US hasn't sent troops to Ukraine since before the 2022 Russian invasion. (Ukraine is an ally, so I wouldn't say we had "invaded" them, even if we had done something like send troops to fight alongside Ukrainians against Russia, I guess "boots on the ground" has a different meaning from "invade" in this context than the Iranian one).

@BoltonBailey "As far as google tells me" oh boy that's a bad sign, if you're going to rely on Goog's search slop-bot for answers.

We have sent MANY advisors to Ukraine: https://archive.is/dGbEt

& by your own comments, they count as boots on the ground

@BoltonBailey clarification to what I take was an AI summary and not your words

"US advisors embedded with Kurdish forces making cross-border incursion: Counts — advisors are soldiers"

If the advisors are US government employees who are not members of an armed service branch (for example, CIA, DoD contractors, State Department, DoD civilian employees, rather than, for example, US army rangers)?

Will a single or dispersed group of covert US advisors who may or may not be military count?

By your definition, would the Bay of Pigs Invasion have counted as "US boots on the ground" in Cuba, or would it have been better described as an invasion by paramilitary exiles with US air support and a small number of CIA operatives on the ground?

@SG2pSQ The original question made it seem more clear that the advisors in question would be a kind of soldier and the AI "clarification" does seem to have dropped this, so I will try to clarify the clarification. I think the soldier/not soldier distinction is important, and has to do with the intended role the person is serving - sending a state department employee as an ambassador to negotiate would not count, DoD sending a "civilian employee" would not count, a CIA sending a spy without the intention of that spy killing anyone or joining other military operations would not count. DoD contractors I know less about what they do, so I'm not sure.

Bay of Pigs seems to be an interesting case, in that it seems like the US went out of their way to make sure everyone they sent was a Cuban exile and not a US citizen, presumably exactly so they could claim along the lines of 'the US' did not invade, that it only gave guns and training to another group. I am not sure whether this is literally 100% true that all the invaders weren't US citizens, I guess if they all weren't then I might say that US technically did not put boots on the ground during Bay of Pigs, I'm not sure of the history.

@BoltonBailey On the "may or may not be military" point: It seems like here you are discussing a meta-point of "what if we are uncertain of the facts to the point where we don't know how this would resolve". I think in this case it should come down to my subjective assessment of whether the balance of probability is on a YES scenario or a NO scenario.

"Boots" as in shoes or just people?

The 'US' is an abstract legal fiction. Abstract entities cannot wear boots. Therefore NO.

@jgyou actually the question does not specify the 'US' has to be wearing the boots. It would resolve YES if the abstract legal fiction of the US picked up and placed a pair of boots on ground belonging to the abstract legal fiction of Iran

Needs clear resolution criteria

This needs some more specificity. What do you consider "ground troops?" What do you think "invades" means?

@ChurlishGambit I guess I felt that these terms have pretty clear and widely agreed on definitions. Can you suggest a scenario in which you think the resolution here would be ambiguous?

@BoltonBailey Every market of this kind has suffered from creators who use strange, abnormal definitions. People claiming, for example, that CIA drones do not count as "US drones."

If you think they're clear, is there some reason you can't simply articulate them to prevent any ambiguity?

@BoltonBailey How would this resolve if

• a US aircraft pilot bails out, parachutes into Iran, and is captured and later exchanged

• a US aircraft pilot bails out, parachutes into Iran, and a few hours later a US helicopter comes in with a team that secures the area, picks up the pilot, and leaves

• there are a few US advisors with Kurdish forces who make a cross-border incursion

• same as above, but the advisors are not active duty (instead they're american mercenaries/volunteers)

@BoltonBailey "boots on the ground" would cover the sort of operation which happened to capture Maduro, but "invades" is clearly a higher threshold and wouldn't have applied to that operation, presumably? This could be an interesting market, but more clarity on what counts as "invades" would be good.

@SacredChicken What we did in Venezuela WAS an invasion. Leaving quickly doesn't make it not an invasion. If I bust into your home, I still invaded, even if I leave quickly.

@ChurlishGambit Thank you, I think that gives a good sense of what would count for this market.

@SacredChicken I'm not the market-maker. The market-maker is very strangely averse to giving basic clarification, it seems

@ChurlishGambit Oops, sorry! I definitely agree that some sense of what counts, even if it's not trying to cover all the edge cases, would be helpful for this market.

@ChurlishGambit If it is helpful to you: if I am myself ever unclear about the definition of a specific word, I often google for dictionary definitions. In the case of the words you highlighted, I get the following results:

"ground troops": soldiers deployed on land rather than in the air or at sea.

"invade": (of an armed force) enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it.

(But I worry that just by saying this I'm not covering your feeling of a need for clarification, because really, any clarification consists of giving definitions which will themselves be made up of words with other definitions, and so to head off an unbounded chain of definitions, I think it is best to just let traders ask about specific scenarios. Most of the time, markets turn out unambiguous anyway, so I don't always feel it is worth the time to make rigorous multi-paragraph criteria unless someone says they care about a specific circumstance)

@Jwags In light of the "google definition" philosophy I outlined above:

a US aircraft pilot bails out, parachutes into Iran, and is captured and later exchanged - I think this would not count, since this would not be a soldier "deployed on land", it would be a soldier deployed in the air who came to the ground accidentally.

helicopter team secures the area - I think this would count, because the team is indeed being deployed to the ground, it is what is expected when they initiate the rescue mission that they will be taking up positions on the ground to secure the rescue.

US advisors with Kurdish forces - I think this would count, because the advisors would presumably themselves be soldiers.

advisors are not active duty - I think this would still count, because a mercenary / volunteer is still a type of soldier.

@BoltonBailey I'm confused, because you said you thought the definitions were clear—why can't you just write out the definitions you had in mind when you made the market? If you have a clear definition in mind, why have you thrice now refused to share it? It's a bit strange.

I appreciate you responding to the other user's scenarios but I really do not understand this stiff resistance against simply sharing the definitions you had in mind. You can edit the market description any time, to include them. Would take less time than writing all these comments out.

>. Most of the time, markets turn out unambiguous anyway

I'm sorry but this is absolutely not the case. The Venezuela invasion markets were full of ambiguity & arbitrary decisions. Even the recent SotU market was full of mis-resolutions & irregular uses of language.

@ChurlishGambit I think what I when I say I thought the definitions were clear, I was not thinking in terms of "I myself consciously know of and can quickly write out a sequence of finer-grained logical conditions that have to be met or not met that give an equivalent characterization of the concept I have in my head". I thought of it in terms of "I can't think, after a minute or so of thought, of a particular scenario where I think there would be major disagreement on whether the words I used should lead to one resolution or another. It seems like probably most definitions one would see of these terms would boil down to the same thing".

Sorry if this doesn't make sense. The AI update has now added the definitions I pasted from google, so hopefully that will clarify things at least a little for other traders.

@BoltonBailey You don't need to write an essay, just say what you think those things mean in one sentence, you know? & please do not rely on the slop system, it constantly gets things wrong & markets relying on slop updates consistently cause problems.

There's already an issue, also, with the definition for "invasion" you've picked. Why is intent to occupy or subjugate necessary? That definition would mean, for example, our invasion in Grenada under Reagan wasn't an invasion, which is silly.

If we put soldiers into Tehran without intent to occupy nor subjugate, isn't that still an invasion?

@ChurlishGambit If you put boots on the ground becouse Iranian government asjed you to help them with water supply, then it is not an invasion. If they object to you putting boots on their ground and you do it anyway, then you probably want to subjugate them, at least when it comes to this question. This definition seems pretty clear to me. This way Grenada is an invasion, becouse USAG did want them to not be communists, while internationaly acknowledged Grenadian government didn't want it to happen, and their discussion happend via armed men on Grenadian soil.

@Aurora_Glow Subjugating means you're going to rule them, to control them. That isn't what we did in Grenada. If you simply go in, kill people, and leave, you're not subjugating nor occupying. But how is that NOT an invasion?

@ChurlishGambit You forced them to not be communist, which official government didn't want. If you are going to just kill people, then you are forcing official government to have your troops on the streets killing people, which they also probably dont want, and if they want it for some reason (e.g. help with suppresing rebelion) than it is not an invasion.

@Aurora_Glow I didn't do any of that, but that's still not subjugation. And what you describe, coming into a place to kill people, IS AN INVASION. Regardless of intent!

@ChurlishGambit I see subjugation here in a more broad sence, like any unwanted enforcement. And are they also invading Arabia and UAE because of millitary presence allowed by official governments? Its not an intent question, its "is it a subjugation" question, and what i say is it makes sence if you see subjugation as enforcing something official government dont want.

@Aurora_Glow If you have to invent a new definition, then the argument doesn't really hold up

@ChurlishGambit Its not a new definition, just one word that's not very precise with your casual understanding.

@Aurora_Glow It's not a "casual understanding," I'm going by what the word actually means & how it is actually used.

@ChurlishGambit When it is used in a casual setting. Its what I say. Precise meaning should see different power dinamics as a spectrum and put itself after the breakpoint of the graph, not some arbitrary threshold varieng from human to human

@Aurora_Glow ...how often are you using "subjugation" in a "casual setting?"

@ChurlishGambit do you really want an answer to that? I don't