Funny that you assume that stating a testing methodology makes it sound more plausible. My own response was more like, 'well, OK: but my money would be on your disproving your hypothesis.'
It's kind of past the point where this is really relevant, but I was interested to notice that lots of commenters launched into discussions of potential knock-on consequences of real-world speckification but not a single person queried the extended cost of a real-world 50-year torture option (infrastructure, training, torturer-trauma, wear and tear on electrodes etc.). Of course, as with any thought experiment dragging in any externalities at all was/is invalid: the experiment sets the parameters, and any speculation outside of these is irrelevant. But ins...
I am beginning to suspect that many markets would show large fluctuations if participants were fully rational
Maybe. But I'm willing to bet that that is not the explanation for Intrade fluctuations...