alt Hacker NewsI don't understand the distinction you are making.
Obviously they are based on current knowledge. Nobody has any actual crystal ball.
But the outcomes are with regard to future events. So the correct term is predictions.
And they don't "just summarize the current knowledge". The whole point is that they better reflect the knowledge of people who presumably know better because they are willing to put their money where their mouth is, and ignore the vast majority of nonsense. That's not summarization. That's judgment. That's the whole point.
My sense is that, for prediction markets to work, there needs to be some real knowledge/analysis/judgement spread across at least a material subset of participants. Simply aggregating random guesses is likely no better than any given random guess.
Put another way there needs to be SOME signal buried in all the noise.