Also, typo I think in the COVID rates one—I assume the first should be 100k because if it’s 10k your predictions don’t make sense (below 50k is inclusive of below 10k, so shouldn’t have a lower percentage)
You don't know if you're in a recession at time t until t + six months, so that's what's going on with the recession one. Are there others that look suspect to you? (I'm one of the people running the contest, so I'd like to make sure everything is correct in the form.)
20% chance you will have a child, 11 months out, means either you are making a math error or you are trying to conceive. Assuming it's the second, so good luck!
Actually, this is false. I know people who have been chosen by a mom within 60 days of starting process. Perhaps, rare, perhaps, not. They went with an attorney in FL.
This entirely depends on the state. I guess Florida makes it easy. I'm trying to do this in Texas right now and there is absolutely no way to get licensed within 60 days. 90 days is the bare minimum, and average time is a lot more than that. That's just to get licensed, let alone to get a placement, let alone a legally free placement you can actually adopt right away.
Agreed, better to breed young if you can. That gives you time for a few more as well as giving you more physical energy to deal with the ones that you have.
Can support this statement. My youngest is 10, and at 45, it's way too old to imagine having any younger kids. Now, to text my wife and remind her it's time to update the IUD.
I think ‘no reasonable person would invest in this’ is an incredibly low bar. Surely lots of intelligent people with money to spare make the occasional small moonshot.
Exciting that we can compete alongside your predictions this year!
A small suggestion: perhaps move away from using the Dow in future? It is a nonsense index with wacky methodology that made sense 100 years ago, and is mostly used by the media for historical reasons/financial illiteracy. S&P 500 (SPY) or total return (SP500TR) are much better.
Agree that S&P would be better, but he is assigning a 90% chance that the index won't go down 2% over the next 10 months, so it's a silly prediction regardless.
"supreme court will overturn roe v wade" - this may be difficult to adjudicate without clarification. By some standards it was already overturned (read: "clarified") by Casey. I suspect you mean, and it might be helpful to rephrase it to, "the supreme court asserts there is no constitutional right to an abortion".
I second this. I predict Roberts will try to create a stricter standard than Casey, while maintaining that a right to abortion sometimes exists. He might also reject the logic of Roe v Wade in some places, and replace it with his own logic serving the same function (similar to how he upheld the ACA). I'm not sure whether that would count as "overturning" Roe v Wade.
My read of this (based in part on that section of the Future Perfect post) is that it's operationalised as reversing the lower court in Dobbs, which seems mostly reasonable
That would explain his percentages better. I could see the Supreme Court not explicitly overturning Roe, but reversing Dobbs and reducing the weeks to the 15 to 12 range. That is very different than overturning Roe and declaring their is no right to abortion, and sending it to the states, or maybe Congress, which is what scares Liberals the most. I guess my own percentages are 75% that Dobbs is reversed, and 25% that Roe is overturned, based on the definitions above.
There's a fair bit of ambiguity here - in all but the most serious commentary, mentions of Roe or Roe v. Wade should mostly refer to Casey instead (in part because there's a reasonable argument that Casey was a stealth overturning and replacing of Roe). So we get the present imprecision, where Casey and Roe blur together in the colloquial shorthand - which isn't helped by the opinion in Casey itself, which completely changed the Roe standard while claiming to be simply characterising and clarifying the right.
Reversing in Dobbs would constitute overturning Casey on the viability line, and Casey purported to be interpreting the Roe right in establishing that line. In other words, *Casey* claimed that the 'central holding' of Roe was the right to an abortion pre-viability, and so upholding the law in Dobbs would constitute overruling the central holding of Roe (according to Casey) even if it happens without completely binning the right to an abortion.
Given that ambiguity, if you're not going to give an explicit operationalisation any question about overturning Roe is just fraught with difficulties of interpretation.
Also, this will actually be the 50th midterm in American history (if you consider the first one as 1826, which was the first to see kinda-vaguely-semi-modern parties and was also the first midterm backlash). Of the past 49 midterms, only 3 have seen the party of the incumbent President actually gain in the House popular vote (1878, 1934, and 2002); in all of these cases, it was just a little, and all three presidencies were marked by huge reversals of position that received widespread popular support. (Rutherford Hayes campaigned on continuing Reconstruction, but actually ended it; Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on reducing the size of government, but actually instituted the New Deal; and George W. Bush campaigned on isolationism, but actually decided to fight the War on Terror -- all of these reversals had widespread public support).
Note that, while Democrats are over-performing, it's still probably the case that redistricting will cause the median seat in the House to move right, so Democrats need to *gain* in the House popular vote to keep the House. We can estimate the odds of this, optimistically, as 3/49 ≈ 6%. In practice enough of the Biden Presidency has already happened to say this doesn't really look like a president coming in to office and repudiating his platform, so we should go lower. 1 out of 40 chance of keeping the House, which 97.5% implies, seems about right to me.
(Senate is always tougher to forecast because it depends more on random strong candidates in particular states, like Rick Scott or Joe Manchin from 2018. Presidential backlashes aren't as consistent. With that said, the specific set of states that are up are not good for Democrats, and they probably need to make gains compared to the 2020-Congress vote to hold the Senate. Specifically, they're defending seats in AZ and GA, which voted Biden+1 in a Biden+5 year, but about R+1 in the House in a D+3 year nationally. So Ds have even odds in both states in a D+4 year, which our math above just suggested is *very* unlikely.)
So, uh, I think the Vox prediction is actually quite reasonable considering American history.
I am definitely not as bullish on the Republicans as most predictions are... in my own predictions (for the contest) I gave them only a 50% chance to win (both I guess?). I think it's likely that Republicans take the house, but not the senate...honestly, what states can they win from the democrats? NH? Maybe GA... I don't think that AZ is that realistic for the Republicans as Kelly seems to be quite popular (as opposed to Sinema). Also, Democrats could win PA (>50% chance IMO), and maybe even NC and/or WI (30% chance). So, that's why I am saying 50% chance that Republicans take both houses.
If you think the VA/NJ results are a good guide to 2022, then the answer is easy: they were really, really close to universal swing from Biden vs. Trump, regardless of local strength for either party, with a zero-point at Biden+12.6. (This technique -- right of Biden+12.6 votes Republican, equal to or left of Biden+12.6 votes Democrat -- predicts all but 2 seats correctly out of 180 in the lower houses of the NJ and VA legislatures, one in each direction.)
So we can say that picking up AZ/GA/NV should be totally safe for Republicans, NH is very likely, but more seats are very difficult. Democrats should not have a chance at picking up any Republican seats in the Senate, the most Democratic of which (PA) voted Biden+1.1.
(Of course, the 2021 elections were held in a really good Republican environment, and reversion to the mean suggests that we should expect Democrats to do better in 2022 than 2021. On the other hand, Biden's approval rating is worse right now than it was four months ago, whether according to RCP or 538, in spite of a Christmastime bump both websites show).
Well....I see where you are coming from, but I still think that state-level elections are rather different from federal-level ones...I mean Youngkin wasn't exactly a "Trumpy" politician, and Trump is still broadly disliked by the majority of the US...so if the Democrats run against Trump (of course they also need their own policies etc.), then they might fare better in the midterms than it seems likely currently...Also, Senate elections are quite individualistic - after all, Collins won in Maine, so I think Kelly in AZ or Warnock in GA have a good chance of being re-elected (>50%).
Things are looking very dire for Bolsonaro around here right now. Most polls place him with around 25% of votes in the first round while Lula has around 45%. And the hypothetical rerun polls put Lula with a ~20% advantage too.
The economic recovery - which was Bolsonaro's big bet for a rebound on the polls - doesn't seem likely. Inflation is still above 10% and the increase of interest rates will most likely slow the recovery. Unemployment will probably remain very high (around 12%).
Bolsonaro's entourage was also betting that we would have overcome the Covid crisis and it wouldn't hurt the president's popularity as much anymore. However we are seeing that even with a much lower death and hospitalization rate, his approval won't go up. People are not forgetting his mismanagement (and straight brutality) during the pandemic that easily.
All in all, I would lower that 50% to about 20 or 25%. Bolsonaro will probably not get reelected.
Especially seems to be a discrepancy between the Orban and Bolsanaro re-election chances. While Hungary's election is in April, he is polling ~4% behind his incredibly disparate coalition of opponents and still seen relatively favorably, while Bolsonaro is both far down in the polls and quite unpopular.
As per https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html, the average 79 year old man has a 5% chance of dying in the next year. On the other hand, many of the 79 year old men who will die in the next year are already in obviously poor health, which Biden isn't, so we might need to adjust that down a little.
I'd say a 3% chance of death, a 6% chance of a serious health problem, and a 1% chance of anything else sounds reasonable.
We've had 46 presidents and 4 assassinations, which naively gives you ~9% odds that a president is assassinated.
Statistically, the president is far more likely to die than the average old man due to this job hazard (probably the statistically most dangerous job).
I think you could argue that the security of the president has increased over time, so perhaps the odds are lower now, but they're still certainly non-zero.
He says it's easy, but starts off with a story of a failed attack. After looking into it a bit more, those drones exploded a couple of city blocks away from their target.
Someone also attempted to assassinate the Iraqi PM last year, but just wound up damaging his house. (Did they just randomly drop it on his house hoping he'd be in the blast radius? Or did they wait for him to be standing outside? Or maybe it was an attempt to intimidate rather than kill? Unclear.)
I'm not convinced that drone-based assassination on a highly protected target is all that easy. Drones big enough to carry a reasonable payload (e.g. https://www.dji.com/au/matrice600-pro/info) are not all that fast (40mph) and not all that small, the Secret Service is constantly scanning the skies for this sort of threat, and POTUS is kept within some small number of seconds from his limo or other bomb-resistant shelter.
(Obligatory disclaimer for Secret Service agents reading this: I do not intend to assassinate the President or anybody else, and don't endorse anyone else doing it either. Keep up the good work.)
;) Shukran, good research! - I surely do not endorse assassinating the POTUS - this one, at least (and bet on a higher chance of his survival ).
"Easy" is a stretchable term, though. 9/11 was not easy-as-pie, I'd say. We shall leave it to the imagination of ... the readers (?) ... how and who to target/protect. Drones increase the options, though. Putin is not that often out in the open air on scheduled speeches. And the Kremlin walls make things less easy than the oval office. Death is not fair.
The president's odds should be lower still because he has unusually good healthcare and people watching him all the time: if he has a stroke while out for a walk he's going to be inside a hospital within minutes.
How about he resigns? I mean, considering his falling popularity, if the democrats really get a "shellacking" in the election, then maybe he should resign...?
In addition to the points others have raised, there's the "what if PRC invades Taiwan" scenario which both of them are predicting at the few-percent level.
Option 1: Biden orders nuclear war. Substantial likelihood that he dies; the US would probably survive as a nation, though, and if he survived Biden would probably not get impeached (though re-election would be tricky considering the geographical distribution of Democrat voters).
Option 2: Biden lets the PRC take Taiwan and is essentially tarred as Chamberlain II. Substantial likelihood that one of a) resignation b) impeachment c) assassination occurs.
Personally I think both of those are highly unrealistic, if not naive. I think there is zero chance an American President orders a nuclear first strike on the PRC merely because they invaded Taiwan. It's not clear he would do so if Russia invaded Germany, and Taiwan is of miniscule importance (strategically and economically) by comparison.
And if the American people feel strongly enough to impeach or God forbid assassinate the President for "losing" Taiwan (which I think is also dubious), then they will support an all-out conventional war, and the US would soundly beat the PRC in one of those.
Even the Chinese think this way, their entire general strategy is based around a rapid fait-accompli -- winning the ground war before the Americans can bring sufficient assets into theater -- and then counting on the American people *not* to support anything close to all-out conventional war to reverse it. (Which is a very sound strategy, I think, and has a quite decent chance of working.)
For that matter, the Taiwanese strategy has always been to delay the Chinese long enough for the Americans to get into theater while the situation is still fluid, they've never had a prayer of holding off the PLA indefinitely on their own. Which is also a pretty good strategy -- and since both combatants therefore have realistic and plausible winning strategies, this is why it's been status quo stalemat for 70 years. I don't see that anything has happened to change that.
Note that "substantial" doesn't mean ">50%", and that I think 2a) is more likely than 2b) or 2c) (B is only a possibility if the Democrats suggest Biden resign and he refuses, since a resignation would look better than an impeachment and a removal can't happen by the deadline without Democrat consent).
I take it that second-guessing the Breyer retirement seems too easy now, but I’m thinking there is still room for a prediction. He has said it is contingent on getting a successor, and it’s not completely clear to me that this will happen.
I was going to ask Scott for a prediction that a Biden-nominee was confirmed in 2022, but I hadn't heard Breyer has made his retirement conditional on it. Not sure whether that makes it more or less likely...
Hi, I'm the co-founder of Manifold Markets (with 30% chance of lasting through 2022 :P).
We've created prediction markets for all of Scott's predictions that were included in the contest!
Currently, you get 1000 Manifold play dollars if you sign up that you can trade with! It's fun, and the best traders will be tracked in the leaderboards for Scott's predictions.
How are we measuring prediction market size? I'm looking at alexa siterank, but that's only ordinal rather than cardinal so it doesn't make sense to talk of things being half as popular if that's the resolution source. Most of them don't publish anything about daily active users, total money transacted, etc, so the only metric I can find about all of them is alexa.
I entered the contest. This is the full list of all our large disagreements (defined as one of us thinking either the YES or the NO side is >1.5x more likely than what the other thinks.)
Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than fifty percent (40)
25
PredictIt thinks Joe Biden is most likely 2024 Dem nominee (80)
90
PredictIt thinks Donald Trump is most likely 2024 GOP nominee (60)
75
Major flare-up (worse than past 10 years) in Israel/Palestine conflict (5)
8
Dow above 35K (90)
80
Inflation for the year below five percent (90)
75
Unemployment below five percent in December (50)
80
Google widely allows remote work, no questions asked (50)
35
Fewer than 10K daily average official COVID cases in US in December 2022 (20)
5
India's official case count is higher than US (5)
20
Some new variant not currently known is greater than 25% of cases (60)
75
Most people Scott sees in his local grocery store on December 31st are wearing masks (60)
90
Masks still required on US domestic flights (60)
90
China has fewer than 100,000 COVID cases this year (official estimate) (30)
70
New legal US real-money prediction market at least half as big as Kalshi (5)
10
New illegal but easy-to-use market satisfying the above (20)
30
Inflation for the year under three percent (FP: 80; SA: 80)
40
At least one country will have less than 10% of people vaccinated with two shots by November 1st (FP: 70; SA: 95)
99
A psychedelic drug will be decriminalized/legalized in at least one more US state (FP: 75; SA: 75)
50
The Biden administration will set the social cost of carbon at $100/ton or more (FP: 70; SA: 70)
35
Joe Biden is still president (MY: 90; SA: 90)
96
At least one Biden cabinet-rank official resigns (MY: 70; SA: 70)
>35. No current residents leave our housing cluster: 80%
Does this mean "nobody moves away" or "nobody moves away AND nobody dies"?
>9. No military conflict between the PRC and Taiwan (a worryingly low 90%) HOLD
My prediction last year (not sure if I posted it on here) was "30% nuclear war over the Far East within the 2020s". I'm not plugged into current events well enough to give a year-by-year. The implicit few% nuclear war this year seems fairly consistent, though.
Could we have the contest at the top next time so that we can give the predictions a shot before looking at your answers? As someone with no experience forecasting and knows that you have historically been well-calibrated, I feel like I should just copy your answers wholesale.
“ 95% chance they lose both houses of Congress implies 97.5% chance of losing each house”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, seeing as P(democrats Lose the House) and P(Democrats lose the Senate) are not independent. It seems like you could say P(Dems lose House) = 0.96 and P(Dems lose Senate I dems lose House) = 0.99 so P(dems lose Senate)*P(dems lose house) = 0.96*0.99 ≈ 0.95
Now that I’m writing these out, I agree that 0.95 is still to high, but its possible to have the conjunction of the two be 0.95 while they could individually be any number such that 0.95 < p(
4. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (65%): SELL to 60%
There must be something I'm missing. This % seems really high given the base rate of overturning previous decisions is so low. I would have thought a straightforward overturning of abortion would ~30% likelihood with the more likely scenario(80%) they cripple roe vs wade.
Giving it back to the states would be overturning RvW insofar as it was up to the states prior to RvW.
Not sure if this was already factored into your estimates, but during the period when the SC was 5-4 conservative, the rumour was that Roberts' insistence on stare decisis was the only thing stopping an overturn. It's also an unusually-good candidate for reversal, considering it literally made up a Constitutional right out of whole cloth (compare e.g. Obergefell v. Hodges where there is at least a plausible textual basis).
So what has happened in the past five years to take us from "No Supreme Court is likely to overturn" to "60% this Supreme Court will overturn"? Were the new appointments crazily unlikely (this wasn't what the news told me at the time) -- or has something else happened?
Trump basically had almost the best possible luck with SCOTUS appointments, and was able to replace 2 of the 5 pro-Roe votes on SCOTUS with anti-Roe appointments to create a 6-3 majority against Roe. Having said that I think Scott was seriously underestimating the odds of Roe being overturned in 2016, even at that point it was widely speculated that it would happen if Trump won given how old some of the pro-Roe judges were at the time. I'm guessing he was thinking that even if Trump did get to appoint more judges he may have struggled to replace liberal judges with very conservatives ones (in practice he was able to do this quite easily)
Well, I'd say that Coney Barrett was much easier than anticipated given the giant swing in ideology from RBG to her, the context of the election year etc.
I get your point about Kavanaugh but even there I think people in 2016 would have anticipated replacing Kennedy with a strong conservative would have been very hard, so for Trump to pull it off despite the allegations was more than I thought he'd be able to do.
Oh, I was surprised too, from what I recall many people were prognosticating he'd pick some moderate who wouldn't frighten the horses, and then he picked Kavanaugh, and the circus rolled into town with the carnival and the fun-fair in accompaniment.
Amy Coney Barrett was less fraught, but they tried, bless 'em: from "the dogma lives loudly in you" when she was going for the Court of Appeals to all the stuff about "did you know she's part of a weirdo cult that is the Handmaid's Tale in real life????", as well as some spiteful shit about her adopted kids.
Was it actually hard though? I mean, I watched the hearings and I remember the news coverage. But in the end everyone voted exactly as they were expected to from the beginning. In retrospect, it just looks like theatre.
Hubris on the pro-Roe side is a significant factor in my opinion - or a mixture of that and signaling to try to keep the Overton Window closer to Roe than not.
Also the GOP has massively dropped the ball on getting Roe repealed before (8/9 justices on the court that upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood vs Casey were appointed by GOP presidents) so it wasn't totally out of the question that they'd screw it up again, especially considering even GWB failed to appoint a hardcore anti-Roe judge when he appointed Roberts.
Yeah, I think that's it; in 2016 everyone was expecting Hillary to win so they assumed when Madame President took office she'd be nominating reliably liberal and sound on this question judges. The shock when it was Trump who got the chance to appoint his own was palpable.
As a non-American myself, I think there were a slew of laws putting restrictions on abortions across several states, the Texas law being the most prominent. Plus the Supreme Court is now six (possibly seven depending on how Gorsuch turns the cat in the pan) Catholics out of nine justices, and you know what us Papists are like about abortion 😀
Also, I think that "they're going to do away with our rights to abortion/reproductive justice!" has been such a bogeyman for such a long time (every single time there's a new Supreme Court justice up for selection, get ready for the Breyer rumble about this, although early reactions seem to be gearing up for hair-pullling over race and gender since Biden allegedly pledged to select a black woman judge as replacement; in almost every election, and when the wind blows north-south-easterly) that eventually the prophets of such have to put their money where their mouth is: "no, this time for real, we genuinely mean it, 'Handmaid's Tale' gonna happen in reality not just that we've been forecasting that since the TV show came out".
Oh, no, I just wanted to express support as another non-American and that has never stopped me rowing in with opinions! It's easy to treat political battles in other countries as entertainment when they don't have a direct effect on what is happening in your own country.
Let me just volunteer the services of the south-western fishermen of Ireland for scaring off the Russian navy 😁
Eh, it's a fair statement; as an American, I know a tiny bit about Sinn Fein, Orban, and Lula, but nothing like what folks in the countries where it's happening would know.
Have been following the oral arguments fairly closely. Basically there are at least 5 justices who are unwilling to continue the charade that the 'viability' line can be found in the constitution or that precedent is a good enough reason to maintain the status quo. And none of the people arguing for or against the issue in question offered an alternative to the viability line set out in Casey (Casey overturned the trimester framework set out in roe v wade). Roe has already been overturned. What I assume we are talking about is 'mostly going back to states being able to decide under what regime the procedure is acceptable', for which 80%+ is a reasonable estimate imo
For the more carefully worded question of whether the Supreme Court will uphold the Mississippi abortion law betting markets currently have it at 83% uphold. So if upholding that law ==overturning Roe then 80% seems spot on.
Eternal glory is fine with me - but who wants "a free ACX subscription"? The point of subscribing ACX is the wish to show Scott how we really, really appreciate (I do) his blog by doling out some dough ( I did not. Yet.).
It's signaling all the way down. INTJ is about midnight-walks. Competition is about competiton (i.e. I participated). Travel in Lao(s) was about self-torture? Being a security guard is reading about Jackdaws.
I tried to skew all my answers to the contest based on a few specific guesses about the future, rather than trying to be accurate. This should hurt my score in expectation, but won't it increase my overall chances of winning the contest by skewing my score distribution downward?
* I don't think I've ever been *explicitly* called a superforecaster, but SciCast once wanted to interview me because I was on their leaderboard. Does that count?
* What do you mean by "within two generations" exactly? Would a second cousin count?
"Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than fifty percent: 40%"
This strikes me as *very* unlikely. While better Covid situation might improve things, I wouldn't give this a better than 10% chance. *Obama* didn't have this after two years!
"Inflation for the year below five percent: 90%"
You should probably specify exactly which inflation measurement you're using here.
"China has fewer than 100,000 COVID cases this year (official estimate): 30%"
Huh. So *fewer* (even at just 30%) cases than in 2021, with Olympics and Omicron putting pressure on the situation? Well, I guess we're talking the official numbers here, so who knows?
If the US economy is growing at >5%, the supply chain issues are resolving, and we're back to normal (https://www.slowboring.com/p/normal) I think Biden's approval could easily return to the mid 50s low 60s.
What exactly do you predict here? I could imagine at least three reasonable interpretations.
a) Starship is at an orbital height with velocity no less than orbital velocity at that height, and with direction of travel closer to horisontal than vertical, up vertically, and also very close to the pre-announced plan. This covers «clearly could go orbital but deliberately opted not to, presumably for failure impact mitigation».
b) Starship's position and movement are clearly orbital at some instant, even if an orbit is never completed.
c) Starship either completes a full orbit around the Earth above 100 km line, or intentionally releases an active payload that does.
> 29. Most people I see in the local grocery store 12/31/22 are wearing masks: 60%
Does this come with an implied «I go to the grocery store on 2022-12-31: >95%»? Or is it «last time in December 2022»?
> V10. China will not reopen its borders in the first half of 2022 (80%): BUY to 90%
What level of reopening? Business travel for non-state-level reasons in at least one direction, possibly with quarantine on top of quadra-shot and testing, or tourism in both directions with at most 7-day quarantine (with easily available level for US and China residents levels of vaccination and testing)?
> V17. AI will discover a new drug promising enough for clinical trials (85%): HOLD
For what values of discovery? Is something like https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alphafold-excitement working out enough? (Human specified targets, specified search space, significant help from AI in filtering, estimated time savings in single-digit weeks)
> Y25. Russia does not invade Ukraine (60%) HOLD
I think it is a good idea to precommit to an information source choice procedure for the resolution. given that there might be pairwise difference between claims by Ukraine, Russia, and US. (It is also possible the difference won't be relevant for resolution).
Also, what level of sabotage/riot incitement infiltration as estimated by the chosen sources would count as invasion?
I had the same thought about Starship. I think a partial orbit is very likely (with the current plan to splash down near Hawaii) but I'd be more uncertain about actual full circuits of the earth requiring a re-entry burn.
Yes, and with Starship it looks like the first chance to try «nominally-suborbital-but-above-orbit» is optimistically in May, with even purely bureaucratic delays till July not unthinkable.
Then there is a single-digit-percentage (maybe I should think more whether I'd give 10% to this alone) risk of early loss of the mission with damage to the launch position — which is quite likely to be a gameover for this year (FAA will have questions, lots of them, and rebuilding the tower takes time even if they now understand the process better…).
Assuming they clear the pad and the gulf, a ton can go wrong with their first >27-engine launch, and light-in-flight of Raptor 1 on Starship has imperfect track record, I think SpaceX themselves won't give much better than coin-toss for the first launch reaching planned suborbital-but-above-orbit height. In case of success I expect them to do a pre-reentry burn of dV comparable to a deorbiting burn from LEO, so that it would be a full «could as well go orbital» test, but still. Re-entry is almost expected to fail, but that doesn't matter that much.
Now the second attempt will probably be with Raptor 2 engines instead of Raptor 1, which — I hope! — means a similar trajectory because Raptor 2 is likely not to be flight-tested by the launch. I hope Raptor 2 production issues are solved by then…
I am not even sure the first two launches going perfectly till re-entry is enough for SpaceX to try true-orbit on the third launch. Starship exploding would be a lot of debris in LEO… And ground static fires still took a lot of time to reach by SN15, I do not expect Boosters magically getting much better, and June — August — November with significant modifications for each next launch would be an impressive rate of progress anyway — but short of «Starship being in true orbit» by the end of 2022, let alone of «Starship completing an orbit».
So yeah, I'd guess above ~5% actually serious issues for the program (probably still surmountable in 2023, but a heavy hit), a bit above ~15% of minor bad luck first two times and enough FAA questions to push the third into 2023, ~70% of suborbital trajectory above many true orbits and maybe ~5% of SpaceX getting things just right every time and going maximally bold (and convincing FAA it's worth the risk).
"9. Honduran ZEDEs legally crippled to the point where no reasonable person would invest in them further: 5%
10. New ZEDE approved in Honduras: 30%"
Given that I think no reasonable person should invest in Honduran ZEDEs anyway, this is going to be splenetic on my part.
So I think it depends how corrupt Honduras/Honduran government is, and the cursory Wikipedia search shows that it's pretty corrupt. After all, this is why ZEDEs picked Honduras in the first place; a poor country where the government would be happy to look the other way about setting up private fiefdoms so long as the right money changed hands "for the economic development of the area", naturally.
So if Honduras is *moderately* corrupt, I think that yes, there's a low chance on no. 9. If it's *very* corrupt (and the new guy seems every bit as scandal-ridden as his predecessors and is a member of the same party which has such lovely items on its record as "In May 2015, Radio Globo discovered documents that allegedly showed that the Honduran National Party had received large amounts of cash from nonexistent companies through fraudulent contracts awarded by the IHSS when it was run by Mario Zelaya. The contracts were approved by the National Congress of Honduras when Hernández was its president and the party funding committee was headed by his sister, Hilda Hernández. Hernández has accepted that his election campaign received money from companies tied to the scandal, but denies any personal knowledge. By June 2015, Hernández had appointed a commission to investigate the cause of the corruption." It's very convenient when you are able to appoint the commission that is investigating your own alleged corruption!), if it is *very* corrupt, then the chances go up.
Because ZEDEs are cash-cows for the governments of the countries involved, and what good is a cow you can't milk? The ZEDE for market gardening/horticulture should do okay, South American countries are familiar with the model of having peons to work on plantations for the benefit and enrichment of a handful of eminent and prominent families.
The ZEDEs which are "entice rich Westerners to come here and work remotely at their high-paying jobs while enjoying low cost of living and dirt-cheap local labour which will have no rights under local law since *you* will be the local law, hence every stakeholder can be lord of the manor" are going to be milked *hard* because you're not producing anything locally like the giant glasshouses/polytunnels ZEDE, and that will mean all kinds of levies, taxes, charges and other "Hello, I am the Minister for Brown Envelopes, so long as you keep shovelling money into my private Swiss bank account your holiday resort will be left alone". No, I can't put a number on this. Yes, I think this bubble will eventually burst.
"4. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (65%): SELL to 60%"
They're giving as high as 65% for this? Well, given that this is a perpetual scarecrow for liberals ('they are going to go after abortion rights!!!!' every time there's a Supreme Court nomination coming up), I'm not that surprised that Vox are getting ants in their pants about this, with the Breyer announcement and a majority Catholic court (and believe me I am immensely tickled about the spectre of the Horrid Popish Plot being dragged out of its grave once more).
I don't think it's going to happen. Things have moved more on rolling back abortion than I ever thought would happen, see the Texas laws, but there was swift movement to combat this, see the Texas laws. So I'd put it more around 40%, if even that high. A possibility because it's always a possibility, but nowhere near a likelihood.
"5. Stephen Breyer will retire from the Supreme Court (55%)"
"21. Kenneth Branagh's Belfast will win Best Picture (55%)"
Ooooh. This one. I was only very vaguely aware he had a new movie out, and looking at the synopsis. Well. Yeah. Standard Troubles movie. I don't know if it's strong enough to win, or what movies it is going up against. I would say 'no' for various reasons (e.g. it's too white, not diverse enough, for modern tastes) but maybe it will be seen as a safe bet to vote for because it's not American?
The real problem is that this year is the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, something which is still very raw and still affecting relationships between Ireland and Britain, and "Belfast" seems a bit too *safe* a treatment of the whole tangled mess:
For a start, this is Branagh reflecting on, or presenting a version of, his childhood in Belfast. Bloody Sunday was in Derry. It's set at the start of the real breaking out of violence, before the British Army becomes the villain of the piece. It's on a personal level of a family and a small boy. It's extremists on both sides who are the problems, with a sort of "why can't we all just get along?" message. It may appeal to voters as a safe choice that deals with Issues that are in the past (the 60s) and far away (Ireland) and so they can have their cake and eat it.
I don't think it will win, though. I think it'll get some awards but not Best Picture.
While we're talking about the North:
"27. Sinn Fein becomes the largest party in the Northern Ireland assembly (60%)"
At the moment, the two major parties are the Democratic Unionist Party with 27 seats and Sinn Féin with 27 seats, the remainder made up of odds and ends:
It looks like they'll pick up some extra votes, but the thing is that the parties cannabalise each other; for Sinn Féin to get extra votes, they will peel those away from SDLP and smaller parties. The DUP will do the same by absorbing Unionist votes and replacing, say, the 1 seat held by a small party candidate. As you can see from this news story, where the 1% for Sinn Féin has come from the SDLP losing 1%:
"The gap has widened since the last LucidTalk poll in November, with Sinn Féin up one point and the DUP down one.
Of the other main Stormont parties, the poll puts Alliance and the Ulster Unionists in joint third place on 14% (Alliance down one point on November and no change for the UUP), the TUV on 12% (up one) and the SDLP on 11% (down one)."
Can you compete if you already looked at prediction markets before you posted, and have seen many of the questions, but don’t look while making your submission?
If you'd like to play D&D, I'd love to run the game for you and a friend. I've been DMing a while, and I've been interested in your writing since you were posting on LW as yvain. A lot of the themes in your work (particularly The Goddess of Everything Else) touched me deeply and affected my own writing (I wrote Significant Digits, the HPMOR sequel). Happy to do a one-shot trial first to see if the vibe works.
60% chance of Donald Trump being the GOP candidate? So that means you think there's a 40% chance he will die in the next 2 years? Because that's the only way I see him failing to get the nomination, such is his grip on the party.
Dying/getting sick is an option, not running is another option. Why would he not run? I have no clue, but I don't think people have a super accurate record on predicting what Trump does, so I can't rule it out.
Trump is not nearly as popular, even among Republicans, as many seem to think. He represents a viewpoint that is very rare in American politics, especially at the national level. That viewpoint is extremely popular within the working classes, and I believe explains the support for both Trump and Bernie Sanders. If there were another Republican candidate who was able to fill that niche, many who currently support Trump may be willing to switch to the new candidate. DeSantis from Florida appears to be actively trying to be that person.
Not that this is the most likely option, but perhaps that 40% is 20% he dies and 20% someone replaces him, or similar.
There's definitely a lot of rumblings in the past week or two by Republican governors (of North Dakota, Arkansas, and Florida, I believe) saying that Trump shouldn't be the next nominee. That's the sort of thing that Trump could head off by deciding to focus on a money-making venture rather than politics, as a face-saving mechanism, or could challenge and lose. Challenging those rumors and winning is probably more likely than either of those other two, but I'm personally not convinced it's over 50% probability.
I'm curious how many of the people who predict large probabilities for Trump being the next Republican nominee are actually Republicans.
I strongly supported Trump in 2016 but I wouldn't give him more than a 20% chance of being the nominee in 2024. I think he did okay (certainly better than another Bush or Clinton!), but he didn't achieve any of his important promises, he did poorly when it came to coronavirus, and his actions post-election didn't cover him with any additional glory.
Well I am not so sure about this either...I mean, yeah he's the favorite - but don't discount that Donnie T might still end up in jail. Also, his health is another factor...or maybe the Republicans will really have a better candidate (Not sure who, but I think if another outside appears...maybe Kanye after all :D ?
(28) seems like it might need a little more clarification? Does a "new variant not currently known" need to be one assigned a new Greek letter, or have some number of mutations relative to current variants? The media's been very excited lately over possible vaguely-variants like "delta-cron" or "omicron 2" or whatever, so I can easily see a future where something the media calls "mega-delta-omi-doomy-zord" or something is responsible for a large number of cases, even though it isn't technically a distinct variant by the standards used by official health agencies.
A variant designated as a 'variant of concern' by either the CDC or the WHO would probably fit the bill. They've designated a bunch of variants as VOC that haven't really gone onto do anything in the US (such as Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon), but going forward I wouldn't expect anything to get the VOC designation unless it has the potential to cause a significant new wave or is substantially deadlier.
FWIW, Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon did cause significant waves, but Beta was really only in southern Africa, Gamma (like Lambda and Mu) was only in South America, and Epsilon was only in California during the first pandemic winter.
Yeah, I was thinking worldwide waves, or at least on multiple continents like Alpha. OTOH I think it's plausible that a new variant could be designated a VOC if it outcompetes omicron, but not by enough to cause a wave the size of omicron. I guess we'll see if the WHO decides to give BA.2 a new greek letter purely due to a transmission advantage
The odds for democrats holding one of two houses seems way too low. Currently betting markets only have republicans with 85% chance to win the house and 75% chance to win Senate. So 90% chance they win both seems overconfident.
The temperature forecast also looks overconfident towards warmth. In the last 30 years only 60% of years have been warmer than the year before them. Even in the small sample of the last 10 years its only happened 70% of the time.
60-70% confidence is only a hard bound for temperature if you don't use additional information beyond the AGW trend. A lot of the things that cause deviations from trend are cyclical and taking account of the state of those cycles can reduce the error bars substantially.
I haven't checked all of the relevant cycles, but the solar cycle certainly doesn't appear to be in a cooling phase.
In my experience (I trade weather derivatives for a living) all of those signals are pretty weak. Preseason weather forecast incorporating those factors are next to useless even as much as a couple of months out relative to other variation in the data.
Of course one thing my analysis leaves out is how hot or cool 2021 was. With reversion to the mean you would expect it to be hotter if it had been unusually cool the previous year and vice versa. Last year was very close to trend.
El Nino is the most important one for global average temperature: years with El Nino tend to be somewhat warmer than the trend. El Nino occurs every 2-7 years. The last one was in 2018-2019, but it was weak, and the last strong one was in 2014-2016. So 2022 is more likely to be El Nino than normal. Slightly higher than normal temperature is reasonable.
Yeah, I mean it's likely that this year will be warmer than the last one...especially if EL Nino ramps up...Already, this Winter in Western Europe is much warmer than I and many other people predicted...despite a La Nina and Easterly QBO...so what will next winter be like? Probably even warmer, though obviously there are also westerly QBO/El Nino winters that have been cold in Europe...
With how far underwater Biden is, and how positive the switch to Republicans over the last year, I think 85% and 75% are underestimates. Is 97.5% too high? Probably, but I don't think 90% is.
1. SELL to 20%. Biden is currently at 42% (as per 538). Getting to 50% would mean improve his polls by +8 pp. This is better than any president has done between the end of their 1st and 2nd year since Truman. Most presidents' approval ratings decline during this time period.
9. BUY to 15%. The recently elected president explicitly campaigned against them. The ZEDE law is in the Constitution, which should make it hard to overturn, but not nearly as hard as it would be to change the US Constitution. How would this resolve if the government passes (and enforces) a law which blatantly contradicts the Constitution?
ECON/TECH
19. BUY to 60%. Unemployment is currently 4%. So you're thinking that the unemployment rate is more likely to go up. 4% is unusually low, but the unemployment rate usually trends downward, and only occasionally rises rapidly. I also don't see how this is consistent with Biden's approval rating increasing +8 pp 40% of the time.
COVID
You have predictions on how high the floor will be for endemic covid, but not for how high the ceiling is. This seems like an easier and less useful prediction.
25. BUY to 10%. So far in the pandemic, India's case numbers have been higher than the US for slightly more than 2 months (May & June 2021). This is about 10% of the pandemic. The US also has a smaller population, is better vaccinated, and probably has had a higher percent of infections.
28. BUY to 80%. This has happened at least 2 times per year so far in the pandemic. I also think that this is more likely to happen than WHO designating it as a variant of concern (VOX 13) - especially since the new variant would have to be more infectious, but not necessarily more dangerous.
29. I'm not familiar with where you live, but I hope this isn't true. I suspect that this will be true for most of the country by the end of March. Which is a long time before December.
32. SELL to 20%. This will only get harder with time. New variants will be more infectious. There will be more pressure to open borders as the rest of the world returns to closer to normal.
BLOG
77-79. It's interesting to get an order of magnitude estimate of how much this blog makes.
82. BUY to 70%. Even higher if different cities in the Bay area count as more than 1.
87. This is a "Science" blog? There isn't even a Molecular Monday for new drug tests.
VOX
3. Don't you have a 50% chance that unemployment will go up to 5%?
10. This is necessary if they're going to keep a zero covid strategy.
22. Sell to 40%. Norway is probably the favorite, but I don't think that any country should be above 50%.
YGLESIAS
22-23. Inflation is often a self-fulfilling prophesy. If people think it will happen, it will, and if people think it won't, it won't. Vox is much higher profile than Yglesias. Vox doesn't want there to be high inflation, and so might purposefully underestimate it, in the hopes that they can influence it. Yglesias is low enough profile that he probably doesn't think that his prediction will impact what happens. I would lean towards Yglesias's prediction.
"The ZEDE law is in the Constitution, which should make it hard to overturn, but not nearly as hard as it would be to change the US Constitution. How would this resolve if the government passes (and enforces) a law which blatantly contradicts the Constitution?"
You just change the constitution by an amendment. Have a referendum if you really need to. Taking the Irish abortion referenda as examples, the "repeal the 8th" amendment to the amendment made abortion legal (in limited circumstances) after a pro-life amendment had been written into the constitution years back:
If I believe the Wikipedia article on the various goings-on, Honduras has no problem repealing the constitution as and when desired:
"On 22 April 2015, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed presidential re-election. On 12 March 2017, Hernández became the National Party candidate by defeating his rival Roberto Castillo during the National Party primary. The Honduran Constitution allows revocation of citizenship of anyone who promotes changing the law to allow re-election, however Hernández's National Party, which also controls Congress, says a Supreme Court ruling last year allows him to stand for a new term. Opposition Liberal Party claims that the court does not have the power to make such decisions."
I remember there being <clever legal trick> to make it more difficult than changing the Constitution normally is. Otherwise, I would probably push it even higher.
But I'm not sure how well <clever legal trick> will work against opposition from the people in power.
"But I'm not sure how well <clever legal trick> will work against opposition from the people in power."
That's why I'm basing my premonitions on "how corrupt is the Honduran political system?" because if they want it changed, and they're corrupt, they'll get it changed (barring the army stepping in with another coup, and that seems less likely this time round). Guy who is part of what seems to be hugely corrupt political party overcomes his rival (on charges of rival with his hands in the till), faces charges himself of having his hands in the till and dubious results of elections, shrugs and goes "yeah, well..." and gets replaced by socialist lady president:
"Economic policy
Castro, in her inaugural speech vowed to re-found a socialist and democratic state, stating she had a duty to restore an economic system based upon transparency, efficiency of production, social justice in the distribution of wealth and in national income, and that her vision of her world puts the human being before the rules of the market.
Energy
In a bid to combat poverty, Castro announced during her inauguration that the poorest families in Honduras; those that consume under 150kWh per month of electricity, will no longer pay electricity bills, and that the additional cost of this policy will be paid for by the biggest consumers assuming an extra charge on their bills. In addition, Castro also announced that her government would send a decree to the National Congress of Honduras to achieve a fuel subsidy, and vowed no more concessions in the exploitation of rivers, hydrographic basins and national parks."
I think any ZEDEs should expect to be paying danegeld, whatever the precise laws may turn out to be. While I'm broadly more sympathetic to the socialist side of things, this kind of campaign promises have to be paid for by *someone*, and rich foreigners setting up their visionary communities are going to be perceived as having deep pockets and being vulnerable to pressure because they don't have roots or ties to the place, or any network of friends/family/contacts to protect them or help them navigate through "this is how we do things here". Always the risk of killing the golden goose, of course, and it's also feasible that not having ties makes it easier to go "To hell with this" and abandon the whole project.
Assuming I wanted to duplicate Scott's bets because I revere him as an insightful man of foresight and wisdom, where can I do that? I'm moderately familiar with the concept of prediction markets, but I've never placed a bet.
> 18. Inflation for the year below five percent: 90%
(under Vox)
> 2. Inflation in the US will average under three percent (80%): HOLD
(under Yglesias)
> 22. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is below 6% (70%) BUY to 80%
> 23. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is above 4% (70%) SELL to 50%
Isn't CPI growth the same thing as inflation? Or at least, it's one of the standard measures of inflation. It seems odd to have inflation under 5% but CPI above 6%, and yet you're assigning at least a 10% chance of that. Similarly, it seems odd to have inflation under 3% but CPI growth above 4%, and you're assigning at least a 30% chance of that.
I have no real comment on the predictions, but I have to laugh darkly at the phrasing "at least $250 million in damage from a single round of mass protests".
Traditionally, one would not refer to events causing upward of $250 million in damage as "protests".
Interesting question. I hadn't considered this kind of strike/blockade action under this prediction.
One could quibble about whether loss of revenue for a company is equivalent to physical damage with repair costs. I'm not sure which interpretation of that is better.
I don't know what "loses power" means here precisely, but a 60% estimate of him losing the election is wildly off. In my experience, basically every sensible person in Hungary thinks that a small-margin Orbán win is the most likely scenario. I mean, it's not impossible that he loses, but it's surely below 50%.
As a brazilian , I can´t agree with this bullish analysis of Bolsonaro´s chances of reelection , 50 % seems a lot right now. He is pooling worse than any other who was able to be re-elected (i.e: Temer does not count). I would to read counterarguments
"at least $250 million in damage from a single round of mass protests"
How is "single round" defined?
Can that be n days in m cities with n, m > 1, assuming they all those individual protests share the same cause (assuming there is a specific one, that can be pointed to)?
Yglesias is too optimistic about inflation. My predictions for "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers" change over 2022:
≥5% increase 90%
≥6% increase 70%
≥7% increase 50%
≥10% increase 20%
This inflation is caused by Trump and Biden printing money to pay for the Covid stimulus at the same time that overall production fell, and it's going to take at least a couple of years to work through the system.
Surprisingly, in my 5 minutes of research I adjusted way down on Yglesias 2 and a little up on Yglesias 3. I was expecting to agree with 80% since it's likely to be a red year and the Senate skews red anyway, but the particular seats up for election look good for Democrats. They aren't defending any Trump-won seats, and I expect these midterms to lean red rather than be a red wave. That means the states I judge to be at risk of flipping are Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Nevada. I didn't have time to look up each individual approval rating, but if I remembered right, most of these Senators are reasonably popular in their states. I think Georgia is more likely than not to flip, but the rest are (individually) more likely than not to remain blue. Altogether I do think at least one will flip, but I wouldn't put my confidence at 80%.
As for Yglesias 3, the next-reddest states after those 5 are Illinois and Washington. Even in a wave election I don't see those flipping. 80% is too low.
As long as people are hanging around here forecasting, might as well enter the 7th annual version of my contest, which looks much like this: https://forms.gle/P3tR8xccsYjYTi5A9 (late entries are fine, just not eligible for the prizes: a book and a bowl of pho)
how is >66% US population fully vaccinated (by current standards) against COVID being evaluated? does this mean Jan 2022 standards (not boosted), Jan 2022 standards (boosted), or the standards in Dec 2022?
I like how Yglasias specified CPI when talking about 'inflation'. i know there is a general understanding that when officaldom talks about inflation they mean the CPI, but they are truly not the same thing.
I find many econ ideas are purposefully or needlessly convoluted and looking into them to unpack what they are saying means a lot. Out of the three big ones I hear most often, GDP, Unemployment, and Inflation....the offical numbers are representing a very narrow and very politically driven set of figures which get reported.
I'd encourage anyone to research further into what is and is not included in the CPI number and see if you think that value represents the inflation you experience in your own life.
It does not include any information about the money supply or real estate prices or industry. It also uses a crazy substitution principle to try to 'mimic' what real world buyers might do.
So if the price of beef goes up and chicken is cheaper, they'll assume for you that you'll switch to buying chicken instead. So.....this number is NOT telling you about the changes in the price of goods then. It takes real inflation and a real upward movement in prices and finds a way through biased arbitrary selection to remove that inflation from their calculation of inflation.
Same with electronics which are one of the worst offenders. Buying a new phone or computer after 2-3 years? Say you're a 'I want the flagship phone' type of buyer...If that phone was $1,500 a few years ago and is $2,000 today, then the price you'll pay has gone up for 'the same' product of the flagship phone.
But they'll pretend that the new 2nd or 3rd tier phones are equally if not more powerful than the ones from a few years ago or have longer battery life or any number of arbitrary selections they make to pretend you can now get 'the same' phone for $800 instead. Every single year for around 20 years they've had this nice negative figure to modulate the overall basket in any way they wish using whatever choices they want to make that year in officialdom.
If you have this much freedom of choice or degrees of freedom in what you're doing...then you can say almost anything you want to say. In a deep dive on this, even 10% of this level of freedom of choice would see Scott lambasting a psychiatric drug study and saying how we'd be utter fools for using it or relying on it to tell us about that drug. They can pick and choose every single variable and arbitrarily include or exclude things such that every year the CPI 'metric' is measuring a different thing while attempting to lie to you about how they're measuring the same 'conceptual' idea of their guesstimate of consumer choices...a concept whose components are redefined every time.
And do we go back and update the CPI to a 'real one' after we interview lots and lots of people to get a refined measurement of consumer behavioural changes in buying choices? Nope! There is not even a hint of a notion that officaldom would ever do that with their CPI.
They are not doing science or the lower religious artform of economics, they are not seekers of truth or trying to tell us something worth knowing about the world. The lack of updates, accuracy, or even an attempt to do this tells you all you need to know. The official CPI is a political and propaganda tool to influence financial markets first and foremost.
It is a pretend game of counting and not counting major categories of prices which affect people's lives...real estate up 30% in your area while Blackrock goes on a buying spree spending 20-50% above market rates? Buying a home is the single largest purchase in the average person's lifetime....don't worry! We DIDN'T count that in 'inflation' or CPI specifically.
Truly this is inconceivable! In the classic meme sense of Princess Bride 'I do not think that word means what you think it means'
CPI is so wonky, manipulated, politically driven, and diverts so very very far from reality and what people's lives are like that I'd assert it cannot be anything other than a lie and is a part of the propaganda machine more than it is is part of any academic or trustworthy way to attempt to describe changes in the real economic landscape.
homes are capital - not a consumer good. Shelter is a consumer good, and that's why CPI uses rent.
> But they'll pretend that the new 2nd or 3rd tier phones are equally if not more powerful than the ones from a few years ago or have longer battery life or any number of arbitrary selections they make to pretend you can now get 'the same' phone for $800 instead.
What do you mean "pretend". This is just true. No one is pretending.
against FP you have Emmanuel Macron at 65% but against MY you only have 60% (technically I could see it the other way because MY only says reelected but FP has reelected president of France so it should be X% and X.0000001% where EM is appointed to some other position and then runs and wins reelection)
I would like to see some more skin in the game predicting about education around here. Too much Bryan Caplan and Freddie DeBoer (sorry guys), plus motivated reasoning inform the discussion. As a first step in a remedy to this here is a market that is OBVIOUSLY mispriced. https://manifold.markets/JohnBuridan/will-any-us-state-excel-its-previou
Fun! for the betting market, I'm just following Scott.
Except for the chance of kid, If he's really trying to make a baby, I'm saying ~80%, but I don't know that's true so I'm going to go 50% of making a baby... which is betting with my heart. :^)
Having a kid changes your whole outlook on life. It's magical and a pita.
maybe off topic, but not sure a better place to answer a q i've been exploring a while: what is the best corporate prediction market software out there? looking for something cloud-based to build out with teams, and my hacked version in google sheets doesn't exactly inspire confidence or confidentiality.
Very Interesting. I also made the same predictions for the contest.
There are a few areas where I disagree to a major extent with the predictions offered by Scott Alexander, Vox Future Perfect and Matt Yglesias. Here is a quick rundown (those predictions with more than 25% difference)…My predictions are in the row below the original prediction.
- PredictIt thinks Joe Biden is most likely 2024 Dem nominee (80)
My prediction: 40% - I feel like if Democrats loose the midterms, then Biden will just resign on his own and Harris will step up. Also, other Democrats could be making a bit of a fuss about him if he doesn't deliver...
- Dow above 35K (90)
50%: Already, the Dow is showing signs of struggle. If the Fed raises rates, then it's hard to see the Dow to continue to being as strong...
- Inflation for the year below five percent (90)
50%: That was already said last year that inflation would only be "transitory"...well that wasn't the case ....so why should it change this year...only if the Fed raises the rate quite a bit...but will they?
- Starship reaches orbit (90)
50%: To be honest, I don't know much about it, but considering Musk's track record in getting products to the markets in a timely fashion (Roadster?), I don't think it's that realistic...
->66% US population fully vaccinated (by current standards) against COVID (70)
95%: Didn't that already happen? Anyway, looks to be veeery achievable …
- Masks still required on US domestic flights (60)
30%: I don't really see the point in this...if there are tests before every flight, and/or vaccine mandates, then why insist on masks (especially if they are just surgical masks?).
- New legal US real-money prediction market at least half as big as Kalshi (5)
50%
and -New illegal but easy-to-use market satisfying the above (20)
50%: I don't know much about these, so I just said 50%...
- Inflation for the year under three percent (FP: 80; SA: 80)
10%: That seems like a ridiculously high number...I think it's really unrealistic to have substantially lower inflation this year...oil prices are still rising, as are many other input prices for many goods...
-Democrats will lose their majorities in the House and Senate (FP: 95; SA: 90; Matt Yglesias also predicted this event, saying 90)
50%: Yeah, like I said this seems to bullish on the Republicans...they probably will win the house, but both the house and senate? That didn't happen in 2010, and while Biden is now less popular than Obama was back then, the difference isn't that huge, and Republicans are now much more of a non-mainstream party...
-Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (FP: 65; SA: 60)
40%: This also seems rather high...I mean it's been the law of the land for so long...don't think most judges would want to change it, and opening up a whole new can of worms...
- Jair Bolsonaro will be reelected president of Brazil (FP: 55; SA: 50)
30%: Well, he's badly trailing in the polls, and seems to be very unpopular...of course they said that about Trump, but Lula is no Hillary...so except if he rigs the election, or Lula gets jailed, I don't see him winning...
- China will NOT reopen its borders at any point during the first half of 2022 (FP: 80; SA: 90)
60%: I am not sure...how long can they really go with this strategy? Probably this year, but then they would have to rethink if it's not a net disbenefit...
- 20% of US kids between 0.5 and 5 years old will get at least one COVID vaccine by year's end (FP: 65; SA: 65)
40%: Don't think it's that realistic to be honest, as so many anti-vaxxers are people with children...also, maybe there won't be as much pressure for people to get vaccinated anymore?
- A psychedelic drug will be decriminalized/legalized in at least one more US state (FP: 75; SA: 75)
50%: Hard to say, but I would be less bullish on it...Cannabis yes, but these types of drugs (LSD?) seem not to be as popular with the broader public so IDK...
- AI will discover a new drug promising enough for clinical trials (FP: 85; SA: 85)
50%: I don't think AI is advance enough....
- Norway will win the most medals at the 2022 Winter Olympics (FP: 60; SA: 60)
30%: Not sure why a small country like Norway should be the favorite? I mean Russia, the US or even Canada sound more like favorites to me...
- Democrats lose at least two Senate seats (MY: 80; SA: 80)
30%: Which ones? I think they might loose NH, maybe GA but probably not AZ... Though I think Democrats can win PA, and possibly WI and/or NC...so on net its -1 to +1, so 0 net seats on average...
- Liz Cheney loses primary (MY: 80; SA: 80)
50%: I don't know...possibly, but I would give her higher chances than this though...
The predictions from Macron seem ridiculously low. I've seen an analysis from the Economist (https://www.economist.com/interactives/france-2022) that gave Macron 90% odds of winning, and that matches both my intuition and the polls. His only remotely serious opponent is Pecresse, and he's still projected to win against her (I'm really puzzled anyone could prefer Pecresse over Macron, but I could see Pecresse winning). Everyone else has no chance.
I'm not into prediction markets, but I'm tempted to actually get in on this one. Either the market is seeing something I'm not or it's suffering from american-centrism and guessing wildly off the mark.
Inflation <5% at 90%. Really? I would not dare to put that higher than 50%. It is already spiking at 7% right now. Labor shortages, oil market is very tight with limited drilling inventories in US shale fields at lower break even prices. And supply chains will see more pain with China sticking to zero Covid in 2022.
If you put a major flare up in Ukraine at 50%, then that alone could push inflation above 5%. Since Russia is a major commodity supplier. And any interuptions to export could send commodity prices flying.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this: at the beginning of 2018 (slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/15/five-more-years/) you gave Roe v. Wade being overturned a 1% chance. Now you give it 60%. Regardless of what actually happens, at this point you'd have reduced your money to a 60th of the total if you'd bet on this.
I'm amazed anyone would ever give Roe being overturned a 1% chance, let alone under a Republican president and senate, with 2 or 3 liberal or moderate justices soon likely to die or retire, let alone someone as good at prediction as you. I guess I'm just asking (light-heartedly, with no offence intended): what on earth were you drinking when you made that earlier prediction?
A bullish position given that the Dow has been hovering around 35K recently. Why so much confidence?
> No recession in 2021 (90%) SELL to 80%
Hmm, what kind of bull is this?
> Medical establishment reverses course and officially says any of Vitamin D, HCQ, or ivermectin is actually effective against COVID: 1%
Also surprising. Earlier you gave a 10% chance that ivermectin works ... is there new data that made you update even more against ivermectin? Or is it just that you think they won't "officially" support it unless the effect size is shown to be unexpectedly large?
> Fewer than 10K daily average official COVID cases in US in December 2022: 20%
...for reference this would be below the 2021 low point on June 20, 2021, and below the low point during the 2020 lockdowns. So, it's obviously unlikely: it would require no new variant-of-concern to arise, and it would also require immunity that endures long enough to prevent flare-ups. Alternately, a genuine apocolypse could cause this result, or a halt to the gathering of statistics.
> At least three dates with a new person: 30%
This I did not expect, Mr. Groom, especially since you said in 2014 that you were asexual.
> The Biden administration will set the social cost of carbon at $100/ton or more (70%): HOLD
Wait, what effect does this number have? I thought it seemed very high as a carbon tax, but low as a estimated social cost (negative externality).
Let's see... reported total emissions are 40.5 GtCO2 in 2019 (38 in 2020). One GtC equals 3.67 GtCO2 so that's 11.04 GtC ... and the IMF says there's $5.9 trillion global "subsidies" for fossil fuels BUT the IMF gratuitously redefined the word "subsidies" to mean "subsidies and tax breaks plus negative externalities" and the actual "subsidies" part of that is only 8% of the total, but "social cost" obviously refers to negative externalities which is more like 90%... so my calculator thinks the negative externality is about $480/ton according to the IMF. So either they meant to say "$100/ton of CO2" rather than "of carbon", or I've made an error, or the US has a huge disagreement with the IMF...?
You said 2021 in a bunch of these, did you mean 2022? Or is it because statistics from 2021 are still not released and that's what you meant?
Some of them I messed up. The Matt Yglesias one I'm not sure, maybe I misunderstood it.
Also, typo I think in the COVID rates one—I assume the first should be 100k because if it’s 10k your predictions don’t make sense (below 50k is inclusive of below 10k, so shouldn’t have a lower percentage)
You don't know if you're in a recession at time t until t + six months, so that's what's going on with the recession one. Are there others that look suspect to you? (I'm one of the people running the contest, so I'd like to make sure everything is correct in the form.)
A couple of the covid ones originally said 2021 but have since been corrected to 2022.
20% chance you will have a child, 11 months out, means either you are making a math error or you are trying to conceive. Assuming it's the second, so good luck!
EDIT: or you are thinking of adopting.
Odds of having an adoptive placement by the end of the year, if he hasn't started the process, is 0.
Actually, this is false. I know people who have been chosen by a mom within 60 days of starting process. Perhaps, rare, perhaps, not. They went with an attorney in FL.
This entirely depends on the state. I guess Florida makes it easy. I'm trying to do this in Texas right now and there is absolutely no way to get licensed within 60 days. 90 days is the bare minimum, and average time is a lot more than that. That's just to get licensed, let alone to get a placement, let alone a legally free placement you can actually adopt right away.
Muster ye gametes while ye may. Old time is still a-flying.
Agreed, better to breed young if you can. That gives you time for a few more as well as giving you more physical energy to deal with the ones that you have.
Can support this statement. My youngest is 10, and at 45, it's way too old to imagine having any younger kids. Now, to text my wife and remind her it's time to update the IUD.
The contest is genius, thanks for running this!
Should "15. Bored Ape floor price here below current price of $203K" be $320K instead? That's what I see at https://www.coingecko.com/en/nft/bored-ape-yacht-club
Nope, I guess the price changed since I wrote this last week. Guess you have an advantage over me by knowing that.
I think ‘no reasonable person would invest in this’ is an incredibly low bar. Surely lots of intelligent people with money to spare make the occasional small moonshot.
Exciting that we can compete alongside your predictions this year!
A small suggestion: perhaps move away from using the Dow in future? It is a nonsense index with wacky methodology that made sense 100 years ago, and is mostly used by the media for historical reasons/financial illiteracy. S&P 500 (SPY) or total return (SP500TR) are much better.
Or use an index that covers the whole US stock market. (Or the whole global stock market, but that's a different prediction.)
Agree that S&P would be better, but he is assigning a 90% chance that the index won't go down 2% over the next 10 months, so it's a silly prediction regardless.
Have you played D&D before?
I offer to be the dungeonmaster for an introductory session with you & 2-4 of your friends!
"supreme court will overturn roe v wade" - this may be difficult to adjudicate without clarification. By some standards it was already overturned (read: "clarified") by Casey. I suspect you mean, and it might be helpful to rephrase it to, "the supreme court asserts there is no constitutional right to an abortion".
I second this. I predict Roberts will try to create a stricter standard than Casey, while maintaining that a right to abortion sometimes exists. He might also reject the logic of Roe v Wade in some places, and replace it with his own logic serving the same function (similar to how he upheld the ACA). I'm not sure whether that would count as "overturning" Roe v Wade.
Totally agree with this one. I gave "overturning" a one percent chance, but I do think its likely the standard will change to be stricter.
My read of this (based in part on that section of the Future Perfect post) is that it's operationalised as reversing the lower court in Dobbs, which seems mostly reasonable
That would explain his percentages better. I could see the Supreme Court not explicitly overturning Roe, but reversing Dobbs and reducing the weeks to the 15 to 12 range. That is very different than overturning Roe and declaring their is no right to abortion, and sending it to the states, or maybe Congress, which is what scares Liberals the most. I guess my own percentages are 75% that Dobbs is reversed, and 25% that Roe is overturned, based on the definitions above.
There's a fair bit of ambiguity here - in all but the most serious commentary, mentions of Roe or Roe v. Wade should mostly refer to Casey instead (in part because there's a reasonable argument that Casey was a stealth overturning and replacing of Roe). So we get the present imprecision, where Casey and Roe blur together in the colloquial shorthand - which isn't helped by the opinion in Casey itself, which completely changed the Roe standard while claiming to be simply characterising and clarifying the right.
Reversing in Dobbs would constitute overturning Casey on the viability line, and Casey purported to be interpreting the Roe right in establishing that line. In other words, *Casey* claimed that the 'central holding' of Roe was the right to an abortion pre-viability, and so upholding the law in Dobbs would constitute overruling the central holding of Roe (according to Casey) even if it happens without completely binning the right to an abortion.
Given that ambiguity, if you're not going to give an explicit operationalisation any question about overturning Roe is just fraught with difficulties of interpretation.
You have two seemingly contradictory Taiwan answers. Clearly the betting markets need more participants so I could make money on arbitrage.
They're different questions. China could lob a few shells at an empty bit of Kinmen and it would satisfy one but not the other.
>95% chance they lose both houses of Congress implies 97.5% chance of losing each house, which seems too high
I don't think probability works like this when elections are correlated.
The actual math would be something like P(lose both) = P(lose House) * P(lose Senate | lose House)
Also, this will actually be the 50th midterm in American history (if you consider the first one as 1826, which was the first to see kinda-vaguely-semi-modern parties and was also the first midterm backlash). Of the past 49 midterms, only 3 have seen the party of the incumbent President actually gain in the House popular vote (1878, 1934, and 2002); in all of these cases, it was just a little, and all three presidencies were marked by huge reversals of position that received widespread popular support. (Rutherford Hayes campaigned on continuing Reconstruction, but actually ended it; Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on reducing the size of government, but actually instituted the New Deal; and George W. Bush campaigned on isolationism, but actually decided to fight the War on Terror -- all of these reversals had widespread public support).
Note that, while Democrats are over-performing, it's still probably the case that redistricting will cause the median seat in the House to move right, so Democrats need to *gain* in the House popular vote to keep the House. We can estimate the odds of this, optimistically, as 3/49 ≈ 6%. In practice enough of the Biden Presidency has already happened to say this doesn't really look like a president coming in to office and repudiating his platform, so we should go lower. 1 out of 40 chance of keeping the House, which 97.5% implies, seems about right to me.
(Senate is always tougher to forecast because it depends more on random strong candidates in particular states, like Rick Scott or Joe Manchin from 2018. Presidential backlashes aren't as consistent. With that said, the specific set of states that are up are not good for Democrats, and they probably need to make gains compared to the 2020-Congress vote to hold the Senate. Specifically, they're defending seats in AZ and GA, which voted Biden+1 in a Biden+5 year, but about R+1 in the House in a D+3 year nationally. So Ds have even odds in both states in a D+4 year, which our math above just suggested is *very* unlikely.)
So, uh, I think the Vox prediction is actually quite reasonable considering American history.
I am definitely not as bullish on the Republicans as most predictions are... in my own predictions (for the contest) I gave them only a 50% chance to win (both I guess?). I think it's likely that Republicans take the house, but not the senate...honestly, what states can they win from the democrats? NH? Maybe GA... I don't think that AZ is that realistic for the Republicans as Kelly seems to be quite popular (as opposed to Sinema). Also, Democrats could win PA (>50% chance IMO), and maybe even NC and/or WI (30% chance). So, that's why I am saying 50% chance that Republicans take both houses.
If you think the VA/NJ results are a good guide to 2022, then the answer is easy: they were really, really close to universal swing from Biden vs. Trump, regardless of local strength for either party, with a zero-point at Biden+12.6. (This technique -- right of Biden+12.6 votes Republican, equal to or left of Biden+12.6 votes Democrat -- predicts all but 2 seats correctly out of 180 in the lower houses of the NJ and VA legislatures, one in each direction.)
So we can say that picking up AZ/GA/NV should be totally safe for Republicans, NH is very likely, but more seats are very difficult. Democrats should not have a chance at picking up any Republican seats in the Senate, the most Democratic of which (PA) voted Biden+1.1.
(Of course, the 2021 elections were held in a really good Republican environment, and reversion to the mean suggests that we should expect Democrats to do better in 2022 than 2021. On the other hand, Biden's approval rating is worse right now than it was four months ago, whether according to RCP or 538, in spite of a Christmastime bump both websites show).
Well....I see where you are coming from, but I still think that state-level elections are rather different from federal-level ones...I mean Youngkin wasn't exactly a "Trumpy" politician, and Trump is still broadly disliked by the majority of the US...so if the Democrats run against Trump (of course they also need their own policies etc.), then they might fare better in the midterms than it seems likely currently...Also, Senate elections are quite individualistic - after all, Collins won in Maine, so I think Kelly in AZ or Warnock in GA have a good chance of being re-elected (>50%).
Things are looking very dire for Bolsonaro around here right now. Most polls place him with around 25% of votes in the first round while Lula has around 45%. And the hypothetical rerun polls put Lula with a ~20% advantage too.
The economic recovery - which was Bolsonaro's big bet for a rebound on the polls - doesn't seem likely. Inflation is still above 10% and the increase of interest rates will most likely slow the recovery. Unemployment will probably remain very high (around 12%).
Bolsonaro's entourage was also betting that we would have overcome the Covid crisis and it wouldn't hurt the president's popularity as much anymore. However we are seeing that even with a much lower death and hospitalization rate, his approval won't go up. People are not forgetting his mismanagement (and straight brutality) during the pandemic that easily.
All in all, I would lower that 50% to about 20 or 25%. Bolsonaro will probably not get reelected.
I was also surprised people were giving Bolsonaro such high odds.
Maybe factoring in the chance Lula gets killed.
Yeah me too. Maybe they were thinking of a coup?...of course that's not the same as "re-elected".
Especially seems to be a discrepancy between the Orban and Bolsanaro re-election chances. While Hungary's election is in April, he is polling ~4% behind his incredibly disparate coalition of opponents and still seen relatively favorably, while Bolsonaro is both far down in the polls and quite unpopular.
Yeah. I agree, and Gave Orban only 40% to not win re-election...
Number 76 seems to be missing a percentage.
I hope this doesn't mean a 0% change of time off...
Covid "By current standards" question is quite vague. Are current standards the original two shots? Three with a booster? Four if you're Israeli?
It seems that poly people have a very different idea of marriage than I do.
Where can I learn more about what marriage is in the poly community?
10% chance Biden ends the year *not* as President? From both of you? What are your likely mechanisms?
Presumably mostly being dead?
As per https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html, the average 79 year old man has a 5% chance of dying in the next year. On the other hand, many of the 79 year old men who will die in the next year are already in obviously poor health, which Biden isn't, so we might need to adjust that down a little.
I'd say a 3% chance of death, a 6% chance of a serious health problem, and a 1% chance of anything else sounds reasonable.
We've had 46 presidents and 4 assassinations, which naively gives you ~9% odds that a president is assassinated.
Statistically, the president is far more likely to die than the average old man due to this job hazard (probably the statistically most dangerous job).
I think you could argue that the security of the president has increased over time, so perhaps the odds are lower now, but they're still certainly non-zero.
Lincoln wasn't assassinated during his first term.
Steve Hsu (see Scott's blogroll) says, assassination is easy: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/08/assassination-by-drone.html
He says it's easy, but starts off with a story of a failed attack. After looking into it a bit more, those drones exploded a couple of city blocks away from their target.
Someone also attempted to assassinate the Iraqi PM last year, but just wound up damaging his house. (Did they just randomly drop it on his house hoping he'd be in the blast radius? Or did they wait for him to be standing outside? Or maybe it was an attempt to intimidate rather than kill? Unclear.)
I'm not convinced that drone-based assassination on a highly protected target is all that easy. Drones big enough to carry a reasonable payload (e.g. https://www.dji.com/au/matrice600-pro/info) are not all that fast (40mph) and not all that small, the Secret Service is constantly scanning the skies for this sort of threat, and POTUS is kept within some small number of seconds from his limo or other bomb-resistant shelter.
(Obligatory disclaimer for Secret Service agents reading this: I do not intend to assassinate the President or anybody else, and don't endorse anyone else doing it either. Keep up the good work.)
;) Shukran, good research! - I surely do not endorse assassinating the POTUS - this one, at least (and bet on a higher chance of his survival ).
"Easy" is a stretchable term, though. 9/11 was not easy-as-pie, I'd say. We shall leave it to the imagination of ... the readers (?) ... how and who to target/protect. Drones increase the options, though. Putin is not that often out in the open air on scheduled speeches. And the Kremlin walls make things less easy than the oval office. Death is not fair.
That's per administration, not per years. We've had 233 years worth of presidents, with 4 in which one was assassinated. That's 1.7% risk.
More relevant source: Patterns of Death in World Leaders
https://watermark.silverchair.com/milmed-163-12-797.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAtswggLXBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggLIMIICxAIBADCCAr0GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMwUSQ34zoIGIFTa31AgEQgIICjiR_PReYheyYhMDf3UoruABmVNKC4Ua3xoBFaU8gYMarKlcrncS417ctgcK78AJQSh61GXpzYHLOcuWJCfEqvT6EykiIicyltfkGn-r2OBj4LANuFR_m_pxc0-kZTGkgC7gtq2TJaBF_XE3HfWq5VVS0mYyeU1A5rD4NDz0ZLBp8c2_lfGEEHba_3aiJNmLv4aQq4VCfeZQfHDFVE8XlOxzYTaYFUCgdqrlE2t-AidwkLLuIBuogRBrEJ9AsVDmulSemGGBdnOJb1p674zft3_m4uWWodSZX8uqGMpV-qhcjAYbUuNX1j1i1h4Dg27bkvdqtbhSdg2hB1LAU9uWpfEk7iiN4QlsUfkhAbO7bz-c-OGKZfMGDUFVdZoVYQDaTxRsF53HSN6_hPr61D74EVZ2AuNIeHvxFVDuv5h9t1O3V_aZH54_leP8_VVc2rPidcFFTAmESHULWWXW1Lti2LeASG8IFn5pQZkZ9Ld1422LMi84N656ogn2mGhneFlBdCiVcJ9L3uzeg82kHb_0ALSpbo-xWZq5svzY-ASkIOGZHRn1BaNFHi9BGXMrvILLIvzNblUbFszd30iHE1sAvC8e4N9E5xBVOS1XJkO2TJcYSYEAWiJ2-wFNZamiGqjdONbv4RophW80C_qY1I-ieC71xzrN9abOSWhUhwc-AZtKP_QRgiK02oJ_8Z8n_HtnkYt5ec1Ml1LL822iGo-arISulPRaETPeHNTFvzx-5sF2L4J8gfEOVXv1qPVw0cFIAui9eSsIBy4iPKD68yO4GqNsraeyB3EsY06o5XYPgkw3UxEfFw2nN5DO_gXL023qgOWpUZX8jpF1-C9sFtOccvV1w7ctuZLqoJCW7-P6v2g
(token in link required)
The president's odds should be lower still because he has unusually good healthcare and people watching him all the time: if he has a stroke while out for a walk he's going to be inside a hospital within minutes.
How about he resigns? I mean, considering his falling popularity, if the democrats really get a "shellacking" in the election, then maybe he should resign...?
For a man Biden's age, the probability of a health problem forcing him to step down (or die) in the next year isn't too far from 10%.
In addition to the points others have raised, there's the "what if PRC invades Taiwan" scenario which both of them are predicting at the few-percent level.
Option 1: Biden orders nuclear war. Substantial likelihood that he dies; the US would probably survive as a nation, though, and if he survived Biden would probably not get impeached (though re-election would be tricky considering the geographical distribution of Democrat voters).
Option 2: Biden lets the PRC take Taiwan and is essentially tarred as Chamberlain II. Substantial likelihood that one of a) resignation b) impeachment c) assassination occurs.
Personally I think both of those are highly unrealistic, if not naive. I think there is zero chance an American President orders a nuclear first strike on the PRC merely because they invaded Taiwan. It's not clear he would do so if Russia invaded Germany, and Taiwan is of miniscule importance (strategically and economically) by comparison.
And if the American people feel strongly enough to impeach or God forbid assassinate the President for "losing" Taiwan (which I think is also dubious), then they will support an all-out conventional war, and the US would soundly beat the PRC in one of those.
Even the Chinese think this way, their entire general strategy is based around a rapid fait-accompli -- winning the ground war before the Americans can bring sufficient assets into theater -- and then counting on the American people *not* to support anything close to all-out conventional war to reverse it. (Which is a very sound strategy, I think, and has a quite decent chance of working.)
For that matter, the Taiwanese strategy has always been to delay the Chinese long enough for the Americans to get into theater while the situation is still fluid, they've never had a prayer of holding off the PLA indefinitely on their own. Which is also a pretty good strategy -- and since both combatants therefore have realistic and plausible winning strategies, this is why it's been status quo stalemat for 70 years. I don't see that anything has happened to change that.
Note that "substantial" doesn't mean ">50%", and that I think 2a) is more likely than 2b) or 2c) (B is only a possibility if the Democrats suggest Biden resign and he refuses, since a resignation would look better than an impeachment and a removal can't happen by the deadline without Democrat consent).
Missing prediction: “Codex members have read at least one chapter of a new work of fiction I'm writing: [## %]”
I take it that second-guessing the Breyer retirement seems too easy now, but I’m thinking there is still room for a prediction. He has said it is contingent on getting a successor, and it’s not completely clear to me that this will happen.
I was going to ask Scott for a prediction that a Biden-nominee was confirmed in 2022, but I hadn't heard Breyer has made his retirement conditional on it. Not sure whether that makes it more or less likely...
is there an implicit 'as of jan 1 2023' for all of the non event ones? ( ie an approval rating, or a price point)?
Yeah, sorry for not specifying.
How many subscribers do you have?
> 33. [redacted]: 80%
Sell to 40%, I don't think it's likely at all.
Hi, I'm the co-founder of Manifold Markets (with 30% chance of lasting through 2022 :P).
We've created prediction markets for all of Scott's predictions that were included in the contest!
Currently, you get 1000 Manifold play dollars if you sign up that you can trade with! It's fun, and the best traders will be tracked in the leaderboards for Scott's predictions.
If you want to participate in the contest, please do that first, and then come check out our markets: https://manifold.markets/fold/acx-predictions-for-2022
#52 and #53. Really?
Scott and his wife are both polyamorous according to the post, if that's what the "really" is about.
How are we measuring prediction market size? I'm looking at alexa siterank, but that's only ordinal rather than cardinal so it doesn't make sense to talk of things being half as popular if that's the resolution source. Most of them don't publish anything about daily active users, total money transacted, etc, so the only metric I can find about all of them is alexa.
> 76. I make a time-off coverage agreement with someone
This one seems to be missing a probability?
I entered the contest. This is the full list of all our large disagreements (defined as one of us thinking either the YES or the NO side is >1.5x more likely than what the other thinks.)
Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than fifty percent (40)
25
PredictIt thinks Joe Biden is most likely 2024 Dem nominee (80)
90
PredictIt thinks Donald Trump is most likely 2024 GOP nominee (60)
75
Major flare-up (worse than past 10 years) in Israel/Palestine conflict (5)
8
Dow above 35K (90)
80
Inflation for the year below five percent (90)
75
Unemployment below five percent in December (50)
80
Google widely allows remote work, no questions asked (50)
35
Fewer than 10K daily average official COVID cases in US in December 2022 (20)
5
India's official case count is higher than US (5)
20
Some new variant not currently known is greater than 25% of cases (60)
75
Most people Scott sees in his local grocery store on December 31st are wearing masks (60)
90
Masks still required on US domestic flights (60)
90
China has fewer than 100,000 COVID cases this year (official estimate) (30)
70
New legal US real-money prediction market at least half as big as Kalshi (5)
10
New illegal but easy-to-use market satisfying the above (20)
30
Inflation for the year under three percent (FP: 80; SA: 80)
40
At least one country will have less than 10% of people vaccinated with two shots by November 1st (FP: 70; SA: 95)
99
A psychedelic drug will be decriminalized/legalized in at least one more US state (FP: 75; SA: 75)
50
The Biden administration will set the social cost of carbon at $100/ton or more (FP: 70; SA: 70)
35
Joe Biden is still president (MY: 90; SA: 90)
96
At least one Biden cabinet-rank official resigns (MY: 70; SA: 70)
85
>35. No current residents leave our housing cluster: 80%
Does this mean "nobody moves away" or "nobody moves away AND nobody dies"?
>9. No military conflict between the PRC and Taiwan (a worryingly low 90%) HOLD
My prediction last year (not sure if I posted it on here) was "30% nuclear war over the Far East within the 2020s". I'm not plugged into current events well enough to give a year-by-year. The implicit few% nuclear war this year seems fairly consistent, though.
"Does this mean "nobody moves away" or "nobody moves away AND nobody dies"?"
Or to be morbid, even if somebody *does* die, they still don't move away. After all, this is what the freezer in the cellar is for, correct?
Could we have the contest at the top next time so that we can give the predictions a shot before looking at your answers? As someone with no experience forecasting and knows that you have historically been well-calibrated, I feel like I should just copy your answers wholesale.
Viktor Orbán loses power - 60% is too much imo, FIDESZ has a stable lead in the polls.
“ 95% chance they lose both houses of Congress implies 97.5% chance of losing each house”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, seeing as P(democrats Lose the House) and P(Democrats lose the Senate) are not independent. It seems like you could say P(Dems lose House) = 0.96 and P(Dems lose Senate I dems lose House) = 0.99 so P(dems lose Senate)*P(dems lose house) = 0.96*0.99 ≈ 0.95
Now that I’m writing these out, I agree that 0.95 is still to high, but its possible to have the conjunction of the two be 0.95 while they could individually be any number such that 0.95 < p(
X) < 1
4. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (65%): SELL to 60%
There must be something I'm missing. This % seems really high given the base rate of overturning previous decisions is so low. I would have thought a straightforward overturning of abortion would ~30% likelihood with the more likely scenario(80%) they cripple roe vs wade.
Giving it back to the states would be overturning RvW insofar as it was up to the states prior to RvW.
Not sure if this was already factored into your estimates, but during the period when the SC was 5-4 conservative, the rumour was that Roberts' insistence on stare decisis was the only thing stopping an overturn. It's also an unusually-good candidate for reversal, considering it literally made up a Constitutional right out of whole cloth (compare e.g. Obergefell v. Hodges where there is at least a plausible textual basis).
Does anyone have any context for non-Americans (like myself) on why the probability is now so high?
In 2016, Scott wrote wrote ( https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/ ) "No Supreme Court is likely to overturn Roe v. Wade at this point". The phrase "No Supreme Court" to me takes into account the possibility of predictable new appointments.
So what has happened in the past five years to take us from "No Supreme Court is likely to overturn" to "60% this Supreme Court will overturn"? Were the new appointments crazily unlikely (this wasn't what the news told me at the time) -- or has something else happened?
Trump basically had almost the best possible luck with SCOTUS appointments, and was able to replace 2 of the 5 pro-Roe votes on SCOTUS with anti-Roe appointments to create a 6-3 majority against Roe. Having said that I think Scott was seriously underestimating the odds of Roe being overturned in 2016, even at that point it was widely speculated that it would happen if Trump won given how old some of the pro-Roe judges were at the time. I'm guessing he was thinking that even if Trump did get to appoint more judges he may have struggled to replace liberal judges with very conservatives ones (in practice he was able to do this quite easily)
"(in practice he was able to do this quite easily)"
If you think Kavanaugh (and to an extent Coney Barrett) were easy, I'd hate to see your notion of hard!
No, I get what you mean about "easy to find such judges" not "easy to get them through the approval process" though it happened in the end.
Well, I'd say that Coney Barrett was much easier than anticipated given the giant swing in ideology from RBG to her, the context of the election year etc.
I get your point about Kavanaugh but even there I think people in 2016 would have anticipated replacing Kennedy with a strong conservative would have been very hard, so for Trump to pull it off despite the allegations was more than I thought he'd be able to do.
Oh, I was surprised too, from what I recall many people were prognosticating he'd pick some moderate who wouldn't frighten the horses, and then he picked Kavanaugh, and the circus rolled into town with the carnival and the fun-fair in accompaniment.
Amy Coney Barrett was less fraught, but they tried, bless 'em: from "the dogma lives loudly in you" when she was going for the Court of Appeals to all the stuff about "did you know she's part of a weirdo cult that is the Handmaid's Tale in real life????", as well as some spiteful shit about her adopted kids.
Was it actually hard though? I mean, I watched the hearings and I remember the news coverage. But in the end everyone voted exactly as they were expected to from the beginning. In retrospect, it just looks like theatre.
2 of the 6. Roberts was anti-Roe when it was argued but insists on precedent. So Trump did actually need both Kavanaugh and Barrett.
Hubris on the pro-Roe side is a significant factor in my opinion - or a mixture of that and signaling to try to keep the Overton Window closer to Roe than not.
Also the GOP has massively dropped the ball on getting Roe repealed before (8/9 justices on the court that upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood vs Casey were appointed by GOP presidents) so it wasn't totally out of the question that they'd screw it up again, especially considering even GWB failed to appoint a hardcore anti-Roe judge when he appointed Roberts.
"Predictable" new appointments were two appointments, probably by Hillary Clinton, not three appointments by Donald Trump.
Yeah, I think that's it; in 2016 everyone was expecting Hillary to win so they assumed when Madame President took office she'd be nominating reliably liberal and sound on this question judges. The shock when it was Trump who got the chance to appoint his own was palpable.
As a non-American myself, I think there were a slew of laws putting restrictions on abortions across several states, the Texas law being the most prominent. Plus the Supreme Court is now six (possibly seven depending on how Gorsuch turns the cat in the pan) Catholics out of nine justices, and you know what us Papists are like about abortion 😀
Also, I think that "they're going to do away with our rights to abortion/reproductive justice!" has been such a bogeyman for such a long time (every single time there's a new Supreme Court justice up for selection, get ready for the Breyer rumble about this, although early reactions seem to be gearing up for hair-pullling over race and gender since Biden allegedly pledged to select a black woman judge as replacement; in almost every election, and when the wind blows north-south-easterly) that eventually the prophets of such have to put their money where their mouth is: "no, this time for real, we genuinely mean it, 'Handmaid's Tale' gonna happen in reality not just that we've been forecasting that since the TV show came out".
"As a non-American myself"; sorry, I didn't mean to imply everyone is as ignorant as me. I just wanted to frame the context for my question = )
Oh, no, I just wanted to express support as another non-American and that has never stopped me rowing in with opinions! It's easy to treat political battles in other countries as entertainment when they don't have a direct effect on what is happening in your own country.
Let me just volunteer the services of the south-western fishermen of Ireland for scaring off the Russian navy 😁
https://news.sky.com/story/irish-fishermen-reach-agreement-with-russian-ambassador-over-naval-exercises-off-southwest-coast-of-ireland-12526744
Eh, it's a fair statement; as an American, I know a tiny bit about Sinn Fein, Orban, and Lula, but nothing like what folks in the countries where it's happening would know.
Have been following the oral arguments fairly closely. Basically there are at least 5 justices who are unwilling to continue the charade that the 'viability' line can be found in the constitution or that precedent is a good enough reason to maintain the status quo. And none of the people arguing for or against the issue in question offered an alternative to the viability line set out in Casey (Casey overturned the trimester framework set out in roe v wade). Roe has already been overturned. What I assume we are talking about is 'mostly going back to states being able to decide under what regime the procedure is acceptable', for which 80%+ is a reasonable estimate imo
For the more carefully worded question of whether the Supreme Court will uphold the Mississippi abortion law betting markets currently have it at 83% uphold. So if upholding that law ==overturning Roe then 80% seems spot on.
https://electionbettingodds.com/SCOTUSMississippiBan.html
Eternal glory is fine with me - but who wants "a free ACX subscription"? The point of subscribing ACX is the wish to show Scott how we really, really appreciate (I do) his blog by doling out some dough ( I did not. Yet.).
The AMA threads seem of practical use.
Perhaps I'm signaling that I appreciate you participating in the contest too, such that you can gain my appreciation equally well either way?
It's signaling all the way down. INTJ is about midnight-walks. Competition is about competiton (i.e. I participated). Travel in Lao(s) was about self-torture? Being a security guard is reading about Jackdaws.
I tried to skew all my answers to the contest based on a few specific guesses about the future, rather than trying to be accurate. This should hurt my score in expectation, but won't it increase my overall chances of winning the contest by skewing my score distribution downward?
* I don't think I've ever been *explicitly* called a superforecaster, but SciCast once wanted to interview me because I was on their leaderboard. Does that count?
* What do you mean by "within two generations" exactly? Would a second cousin count?
Does "90% chance Biden is still president" means 10% chance Biden will retire due to bad health/death?
Most likely, though there are scenarios of invoking the 25th Amendment or even possibly impeachment.
These jumped out at me:
"Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than fifty percent: 40%"
This strikes me as *very* unlikely. While better Covid situation might improve things, I wouldn't give this a better than 10% chance. *Obama* didn't have this after two years!
"Inflation for the year below five percent: 90%"
You should probably specify exactly which inflation measurement you're using here.
"China has fewer than 100,000 COVID cases this year (official estimate): 30%"
Huh. So *fewer* (even at just 30%) cases than in 2021, with Olympics and Omicron putting pressure on the situation? Well, I guess we're talking the official numbers here, so who knows?
China had ~13k reported cases in 2021
Yes, you're right - I misread the statistics.
re China, I think you're right: it's the official numbers we're looking at, so that'll be whatever China's leaders need them to be.
If the US economy is growing at >5%, the supply chain issues are resolving, and we're back to normal (https://www.slowboring.com/p/normal) I think Biden's approval could easily return to the mid 50s low 60s.
Does "most likely" mean "more likely than any other option" or "51% or more"?
What are your predictions for mandates or rules only for vaxxed?
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/
Hmm, Main quibble points for me is on inflation (think chance of >5pct is higher) and unemployment (think >5pct chance is lower)
Stupid questions about predictions:
> 21. Starship reaches orbit: 90%
What exactly do you predict here? I could imagine at least three reasonable interpretations.
a) Starship is at an orbital height with velocity no less than orbital velocity at that height, and with direction of travel closer to horisontal than vertical, up vertically, and also very close to the pre-announced plan. This covers «clearly could go orbital but deliberately opted not to, presumably for failure impact mitigation».
b) Starship's position and movement are clearly orbital at some instant, even if an orbit is never completed.
c) Starship either completes a full orbit around the Earth above 100 km line, or intentionally releases an active payload that does.
> 29. Most people I see in the local grocery store 12/31/22 are wearing masks: 60%
Does this come with an implied «I go to the grocery store on 2022-12-31: >95%»? Or is it «last time in December 2022»?
> V10. China will not reopen its borders in the first half of 2022 (80%): BUY to 90%
What level of reopening? Business travel for non-state-level reasons in at least one direction, possibly with quarantine on top of quadra-shot and testing, or tourism in both directions with at most 7-day quarantine (with easily available level for US and China residents levels of vaccination and testing)?
> V17. AI will discover a new drug promising enough for clinical trials (85%): HOLD
For what values of discovery? Is something like https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alphafold-excitement working out enough? (Human specified targets, specified search space, significant help from AI in filtering, estimated time savings in single-digit weeks)
> Y25. Russia does not invade Ukraine (60%) HOLD
I think it is a good idea to precommit to an information source choice procedure for the resolution. given that there might be pairwise difference between claims by Ukraine, Russia, and US. (It is also possible the difference won't be relevant for resolution).
Also, what level of sabotage/riot incitement infiltration as estimated by the chosen sources would count as invasion?
I had the same thought about Starship. I think a partial orbit is very likely (with the current plan to splash down near Hawaii) but I'd be more uncertain about actual full circuits of the earth requiring a re-entry burn.
Yes, and with Starship it looks like the first chance to try «nominally-suborbital-but-above-orbit» is optimistically in May, with even purely bureaucratic delays till July not unthinkable.
Then there is a single-digit-percentage (maybe I should think more whether I'd give 10% to this alone) risk of early loss of the mission with damage to the launch position — which is quite likely to be a gameover for this year (FAA will have questions, lots of them, and rebuilding the tower takes time even if they now understand the process better…).
Assuming they clear the pad and the gulf, a ton can go wrong with their first >27-engine launch, and light-in-flight of Raptor 1 on Starship has imperfect track record, I think SpaceX themselves won't give much better than coin-toss for the first launch reaching planned suborbital-but-above-orbit height. In case of success I expect them to do a pre-reentry burn of dV comparable to a deorbiting burn from LEO, so that it would be a full «could as well go orbital» test, but still. Re-entry is almost expected to fail, but that doesn't matter that much.
Now the second attempt will probably be with Raptor 2 engines instead of Raptor 1, which — I hope! — means a similar trajectory because Raptor 2 is likely not to be flight-tested by the launch. I hope Raptor 2 production issues are solved by then…
I am not even sure the first two launches going perfectly till re-entry is enough for SpaceX to try true-orbit on the third launch. Starship exploding would be a lot of debris in LEO… And ground static fires still took a lot of time to reach by SN15, I do not expect Boosters magically getting much better, and June — August — November with significant modifications for each next launch would be an impressive rate of progress anyway — but short of «Starship being in true orbit» by the end of 2022, let alone of «Starship completing an orbit».
So yeah, I'd guess above ~5% actually serious issues for the program (probably still surmountable in 2023, but a heavy hit), a bit above ~15% of minor bad luck first two times and enough FAA questions to push the third into 2023, ~70% of suborbital trajectory above many true orbits and maybe ~5% of SpaceX getting things just right every time and going maximally bold (and convincing FAA it's worth the risk).
The #76 does not specify any percentage.
"9. Honduran ZEDEs legally crippled to the point where no reasonable person would invest in them further: 5%
10. New ZEDE approved in Honduras: 30%"
Given that I think no reasonable person should invest in Honduran ZEDEs anyway, this is going to be splenetic on my part.
So I think it depends how corrupt Honduras/Honduran government is, and the cursory Wikipedia search shows that it's pretty corrupt. After all, this is why ZEDEs picked Honduras in the first place; a poor country where the government would be happy to look the other way about setting up private fiefdoms so long as the right money changed hands "for the economic development of the area", naturally.
So if Honduras is *moderately* corrupt, I think that yes, there's a low chance on no. 9. If it's *very* corrupt (and the new guy seems every bit as scandal-ridden as his predecessors and is a member of the same party which has such lovely items on its record as "In May 2015, Radio Globo discovered documents that allegedly showed that the Honduran National Party had received large amounts of cash from nonexistent companies through fraudulent contracts awarded by the IHSS when it was run by Mario Zelaya. The contracts were approved by the National Congress of Honduras when Hernández was its president and the party funding committee was headed by his sister, Hilda Hernández. Hernández has accepted that his election campaign received money from companies tied to the scandal, but denies any personal knowledge. By June 2015, Hernández had appointed a commission to investigate the cause of the corruption." It's very convenient when you are able to appoint the commission that is investigating your own alleged corruption!), if it is *very* corrupt, then the chances go up.
Because ZEDEs are cash-cows for the governments of the countries involved, and what good is a cow you can't milk? The ZEDE for market gardening/horticulture should do okay, South American countries are familiar with the model of having peons to work on plantations for the benefit and enrichment of a handful of eminent and prominent families.
The ZEDEs which are "entice rich Westerners to come here and work remotely at their high-paying jobs while enjoying low cost of living and dirt-cheap local labour which will have no rights under local law since *you* will be the local law, hence every stakeholder can be lord of the manor" are going to be milked *hard* because you're not producing anything locally like the giant glasshouses/polytunnels ZEDE, and that will mean all kinds of levies, taxes, charges and other "Hello, I am the Minister for Brown Envelopes, so long as you keep shovelling money into my private Swiss bank account your holiday resort will be left alone". No, I can't put a number on this. Yes, I think this bubble will eventually burst.
"4. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (65%): SELL to 60%"
They're giving as high as 65% for this? Well, given that this is a perpetual scarecrow for liberals ('they are going to go after abortion rights!!!!' every time there's a Supreme Court nomination coming up), I'm not that surprised that Vox are getting ants in their pants about this, with the Breyer announcement and a majority Catholic court (and believe me I am immensely tickled about the spectre of the Horrid Popish Plot being dragged out of its grave once more).
I don't think it's going to happen. Things have moved more on rolling back abortion than I ever thought would happen, see the Texas laws, but there was swift movement to combat this, see the Texas laws. So I'd put it more around 40%, if even that high. A possibility because it's always a possibility, but nowhere near a likelihood.
"5. Stephen Breyer will retire from the Supreme Court (55%)"
I thought he said he was definitely going? Especially since his own party has been handing him his hat and showing him the door? https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2022/02/01/with-breyers-retirement-the-us-congress-has-lost-its-champion-at-the-supreme-court/
"21. Kenneth Branagh's Belfast will win Best Picture (55%)"
Ooooh. This one. I was only very vaguely aware he had a new movie out, and looking at the synopsis. Well. Yeah. Standard Troubles movie. I don't know if it's strong enough to win, or what movies it is going up against. I would say 'no' for various reasons (e.g. it's too white, not diverse enough, for modern tastes) but maybe it will be seen as a safe bet to vote for because it's not American?
The real problem is that this year is the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, something which is still very raw and still affecting relationships between Ireland and Britain, and "Belfast" seems a bit too *safe* a treatment of the whole tangled mess:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/bloody-sunday-what-i-remember-most-is-the-whistling-of-bullets-1.4789410
For a start, this is Branagh reflecting on, or presenting a version of, his childhood in Belfast. Bloody Sunday was in Derry. It's set at the start of the real breaking out of violence, before the British Army becomes the villain of the piece. It's on a personal level of a family and a small boy. It's extremists on both sides who are the problems, with a sort of "why can't we all just get along?" message. It may appeal to voters as a safe choice that deals with Issues that are in the past (the 60s) and far away (Ireland) and so they can have their cake and eat it.
I don't think it will win, though. I think it'll get some awards but not Best Picture.
While we're talking about the North:
"27. Sinn Fein becomes the largest party in the Northern Ireland assembly (60%)"
At the moment, the two major parties are the Democratic Unionist Party with 27 seats and Sinn Féin with 27 seats, the remainder made up of odds and ends:
http://aims.niassembly.gov.uk/mlas/statistics.aspx
It looks like they'll pick up some extra votes, but the thing is that the parties cannabalise each other; for Sinn Féin to get extra votes, they will peel those away from SDLP and smaller parties. The DUP will do the same by absorbing Unionist votes and replacing, say, the 1 seat held by a small party candidate. As you can see from this news story, where the 1% for Sinn Féin has come from the SDLP losing 1%:
https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2022/0122/1275237-sinn-fein/
"The gap has widened since the last LucidTalk poll in November, with Sinn Féin up one point and the DUP down one.
Of the other main Stormont parties, the poll puts Alliance and the Ulster Unionists in joint third place on 14% (Alliance down one point on November and no change for the UUP), the TUV on 12% (up one) and the SDLP on 11% (down one)."
Can you compete if you already looked at prediction markets before you posted, and have seen many of the questions, but don’t look while making your submission?
The bigger question is "how can you tell whether people looked at prediction markets?"
Yglesias #2. Net or Gross?
If you'd like to play D&D, I'd love to run the game for you and a friend. I've been DMing a while, and I've been interested in your writing since you were posting on LW as yvain. A lot of the themes in your work (particularly The Goddess of Everything Else) touched me deeply and affected my own writing (I wrote Significant Digits, the HPMOR sequel). Happy to do a one-shot trial first to see if the vibe works.
I'm a big fan of Significant Digits – thanks!
60% chance of Donald Trump being the GOP candidate? So that means you think there's a 40% chance he will die in the next 2 years? Because that's the only way I see him failing to get the nomination, such is his grip on the party.
There is the possibility of invoking Amendment 14 Section 3.
(Using that section on presidential nominations is a Bad Idea. This unfortunately does not guarantee that it will not occur.)
Dying/getting sick is an option, not running is another option. Why would he not run? I have no clue, but I don't think people have a super accurate record on predicting what Trump does, so I can't rule it out.
Trump is not nearly as popular, even among Republicans, as many seem to think. He represents a viewpoint that is very rare in American politics, especially at the national level. That viewpoint is extremely popular within the working classes, and I believe explains the support for both Trump and Bernie Sanders. If there were another Republican candidate who was able to fill that niche, many who currently support Trump may be willing to switch to the new candidate. DeSantis from Florida appears to be actively trying to be that person.
Not that this is the most likely option, but perhaps that 40% is 20% he dies and 20% someone replaces him, or similar.
Huh, I hate Trump, but I'd like to bet he's more likely than Biden to be the running in 2024. He's still wildly popular where I live.
This isn't whether Trump is the candidate - it's whether prediction markets think he will be more than a year early.
There's definitely a lot of rumblings in the past week or two by Republican governors (of North Dakota, Arkansas, and Florida, I believe) saying that Trump shouldn't be the next nominee. That's the sort of thing that Trump could head off by deciding to focus on a money-making venture rather than politics, as a face-saving mechanism, or could challenge and lose. Challenging those rumors and winning is probably more likely than either of those other two, but I'm personally not convinced it's over 50% probability.
Yeah me too. I put 40% (though prediction markets might not change as much).
I'm curious how many of the people who predict large probabilities for Trump being the next Republican nominee are actually Republicans.
I strongly supported Trump in 2016 but I wouldn't give him more than a 20% chance of being the nominee in 2024. I think he did okay (certainly better than another Bush or Clinton!), but he didn't achieve any of his important promises, he did poorly when it came to coronavirus, and his actions post-election didn't cover him with any additional glory.
Well I am not so sure about this either...I mean, yeah he's the favorite - but don't discount that Donnie T might still end up in jail. Also, his health is another factor...or maybe the Republicans will really have a better candidate (Not sure who, but I think if another outside appears...maybe Kanye after all :D ?
(28) seems like it might need a little more clarification? Does a "new variant not currently known" need to be one assigned a new Greek letter, or have some number of mutations relative to current variants? The media's been very excited lately over possible vaguely-variants like "delta-cron" or "omicron 2" or whatever, so I can easily see a future where something the media calls "mega-delta-omi-doomy-zord" or something is responsible for a large number of cases, even though it isn't technically a distinct variant by the standards used by official health agencies.
A variant designated as a 'variant of concern' by either the CDC or the WHO would probably fit the bill. They've designated a bunch of variants as VOC that haven't really gone onto do anything in the US (such as Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon), but going forward I wouldn't expect anything to get the VOC designation unless it has the potential to cause a significant new wave or is substantially deadlier.
FWIW, Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon did cause significant waves, but Beta was really only in southern Africa, Gamma (like Lambda and Mu) was only in South America, and Epsilon was only in California during the first pandemic winter.
Yeah, I was thinking worldwide waves, or at least on multiple continents like Alpha. OTOH I think it's plausible that a new variant could be designated a VOC if it outcompetes omicron, but not by enough to cause a wave the size of omicron. I guess we'll see if the WHO decides to give BA.2 a new greek letter purely due to a transmission advantage
The odds for democrats holding one of two houses seems way too low. Currently betting markets only have republicans with 85% chance to win the house and 75% chance to win Senate. So 90% chance they win both seems overconfident.
The temperature forecast also looks overconfident towards warmth. In the last 30 years only 60% of years have been warmer than the year before them. Even in the small sample of the last 10 years its only happened 70% of the time.
60-70% confidence is only a hard bound for temperature if you don't use additional information beyond the AGW trend. A lot of the things that cause deviations from trend are cyclical and taking account of the state of those cycles can reduce the error bars substantially.
I haven't checked all of the relevant cycles, but the solar cycle certainly doesn't appear to be in a cooling phase.
In my experience (I trade weather derivatives for a living) all of those signals are pretty weak. Preseason weather forecast incorporating those factors are next to useless even as much as a couple of months out relative to other variation in the data.
Of course one thing my analysis leaves out is how hot or cool 2021 was. With reversion to the mean you would expect it to be hotter if it had been unusually cool the previous year and vice versa. Last year was very close to trend.
El Nino is the most important one for global average temperature: years with El Nino tend to be somewhat warmer than the trend. El Nino occurs every 2-7 years. The last one was in 2018-2019, but it was weak, and the last strong one was in 2014-2016. So 2022 is more likely to be El Nino than normal. Slightly higher than normal temperature is reasonable.
Yeah, I mean it's likely that this year will be warmer than the last one...especially if EL Nino ramps up...Already, this Winter in Western Europe is much warmer than I and many other people predicted...despite a La Nina and Easterly QBO...so what will next winter be like? Probably even warmer, though obviously there are also westerly QBO/El Nino winters that have been cold in Europe...
With how far underwater Biden is, and how positive the switch to Republicans over the last year, I think 85% and 75% are underestimates. Is 97.5% too high? Probably, but I don't think 90% is.
Yeah but we have quite a while for lots of shit to happen. I would sell down to around 80%.
Yeah, I agree about the house and senate. I think House is likely to go Republican (75+%), but the Senate is like 60% to stay Democratic IMO.
US/WORLD
1. SELL to 20%. Biden is currently at 42% (as per 538). Getting to 50% would mean improve his polls by +8 pp. This is better than any president has done between the end of their 1st and 2nd year since Truman. Most presidents' approval ratings decline during this time period.
9. BUY to 15%. The recently elected president explicitly campaigned against them. The ZEDE law is in the Constitution, which should make it hard to overturn, but not nearly as hard as it would be to change the US Constitution. How would this resolve if the government passes (and enforces) a law which blatantly contradicts the Constitution?
ECON/TECH
19. BUY to 60%. Unemployment is currently 4%. So you're thinking that the unemployment rate is more likely to go up. 4% is unusually low, but the unemployment rate usually trends downward, and only occasionally rises rapidly. I also don't see how this is consistent with Biden's approval rating increasing +8 pp 40% of the time.
COVID
You have predictions on how high the floor will be for endemic covid, but not for how high the ceiling is. This seems like an easier and less useful prediction.
25. BUY to 10%. So far in the pandemic, India's case numbers have been higher than the US for slightly more than 2 months (May & June 2021). This is about 10% of the pandemic. The US also has a smaller population, is better vaccinated, and probably has had a higher percent of infections.
28. BUY to 80%. This has happened at least 2 times per year so far in the pandemic. I also think that this is more likely to happen than WHO designating it as a variant of concern (VOX 13) - especially since the new variant would have to be more infectious, but not necessarily more dangerous.
29. I'm not familiar with where you live, but I hope this isn't true. I suspect that this will be true for most of the country by the end of March. Which is a long time before December.
32. SELL to 20%. This will only get harder with time. New variants will be more infectious. There will be more pressure to open borders as the rest of the world returns to closer to normal.
BLOG
77-79. It's interesting to get an order of magnitude estimate of how much this blog makes.
82. BUY to 70%. Even higher if different cities in the Bay area count as more than 1.
87. This is a "Science" blog? There isn't even a Molecular Monday for new drug tests.
VOX
3. Don't you have a 50% chance that unemployment will go up to 5%?
10. This is necessary if they're going to keep a zero covid strategy.
15. There are currently 36 countries with less than a 10% vaccination rate (as per NPR). North Korea is "No Data" and so isn't included. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/14/1072188527/for-the-36-countries-with-the-lowest-vaccination-rates-supply-isnt-the-only-issu
16. Is this for an entire state? Or does a city in a new state count?
18. That's depressing.
19. SELL to 40%. The current social cost of carbon is at $51/ton. Is there a reason why Biden would double it? One of the first results I found from Google is a Vox article arguing for $258/ton ... by one of the authors of the predictions. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22643358/social-cost-of-carbon-mortality-biden-discounting
22. Sell to 40%. Norway is probably the favorite, but I don't think that any country should be above 50%.
YGLESIAS
22-23. Inflation is often a self-fulfilling prophesy. If people think it will happen, it will, and if people think it won't, it won't. Vox is much higher profile than Yglesias. Vox doesn't want there to be high inflation, and so might purposefully underestimate it, in the hopes that they can influence it. Yglesias is low enough profile that he probably doesn't think that his prediction will impact what happens. I would lean towards Yglesias's prediction.
"The ZEDE law is in the Constitution, which should make it hard to overturn, but not nearly as hard as it would be to change the US Constitution. How would this resolve if the government passes (and enforces) a law which blatantly contradicts the Constitution?"
You just change the constitution by an amendment. Have a referendum if you really need to. Taking the Irish abortion referenda as examples, the "repeal the 8th" amendment to the amendment made abortion legal (in limited circumstances) after a pro-life amendment had been written into the constitution years back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-sixth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
If I believe the Wikipedia article on the various goings-on, Honduras has no problem repealing the constitution as and when desired:
"On 22 April 2015, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed presidential re-election. On 12 March 2017, Hernández became the National Party candidate by defeating his rival Roberto Castillo during the National Party primary. The Honduran Constitution allows revocation of citizenship of anyone who promotes changing the law to allow re-election, however Hernández's National Party, which also controls Congress, says a Supreme Court ruling last year allows him to stand for a new term. Opposition Liberal Party claims that the court does not have the power to make such decisions."
I remember there being <clever legal trick> to make it more difficult than changing the Constitution normally is. Otherwise, I would probably push it even higher.
But I'm not sure how well <clever legal trick> will work against opposition from the people in power.
"But I'm not sure how well <clever legal trick> will work against opposition from the people in power."
That's why I'm basing my premonitions on "how corrupt is the Honduran political system?" because if they want it changed, and they're corrupt, they'll get it changed (barring the army stepping in with another coup, and that seems less likely this time round). Guy who is part of what seems to be hugely corrupt political party overcomes his rival (on charges of rival with his hands in the till), faces charges himself of having his hands in the till and dubious results of elections, shrugs and goes "yeah, well..." and gets replaced by socialist lady president:
"Economic policy
Castro, in her inaugural speech vowed to re-found a socialist and democratic state, stating she had a duty to restore an economic system based upon transparency, efficiency of production, social justice in the distribution of wealth and in national income, and that her vision of her world puts the human being before the rules of the market.
Energy
In a bid to combat poverty, Castro announced during her inauguration that the poorest families in Honduras; those that consume under 150kWh per month of electricity, will no longer pay electricity bills, and that the additional cost of this policy will be paid for by the biggest consumers assuming an extra charge on their bills. In addition, Castro also announced that her government would send a decree to the National Congress of Honduras to achieve a fuel subsidy, and vowed no more concessions in the exploitation of rivers, hydrographic basins and national parks."
I think any ZEDEs should expect to be paying danegeld, whatever the precise laws may turn out to be. While I'm broadly more sympathetic to the socialist side of things, this kind of campaign promises have to be paid for by *someone*, and rich foreigners setting up their visionary communities are going to be perceived as having deep pockets and being vulnerable to pressure because they don't have roots or ties to the place, or any network of friends/family/contacts to protect them or help them navigate through "this is how we do things here". Always the risk of killing the golden goose, of course, and it's also feasible that not having ties makes it easier to go "To hell with this" and abandon the whole project.
Assuming I wanted to duplicate Scott's bets because I revere him as an insightful man of foresight and wisdom, where can I do that? I'm moderately familiar with the concept of prediction markets, but I've never placed a bet.
Much too bullish on inflation. Doubt very seriously it will be below 4-5% for the year.
Also, your triple prediction on COVID treatments seems way too low at 1%. Would go with 25%.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-offers-strongest-proof-yet-of-vitamin-ds-power-to-fight-covid/
I'm confused by the inflation ones.
(on own predictions)
> 18. Inflation for the year below five percent: 90%
(under Vox)
> 2. Inflation in the US will average under three percent (80%): HOLD
(under Yglesias)
> 22. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is below 6% (70%) BUY to 80%
> 23. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is above 4% (70%) SELL to 50%
Isn't CPI growth the same thing as inflation? Or at least, it's one of the standard measures of inflation. It seems odd to have inflation under 5% but CPI above 6%, and yet you're assigning at least a 10% chance of that. Similarly, it seems odd to have inflation under 3% but CPI growth above 4%, and you're assigning at least a 30% chance of that.
I have no real comment on the predictions, but I have to laugh darkly at the phrasing "at least $250 million in damage from a single round of mass protests".
Traditionally, one would not refer to events causing upward of $250 million in damage as "protests".
Does truckers' protests qualify? Technically they are not in the US but the losses seem to be in the US side as well: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/magna-feels-the-pressure-from-bridge-closure-as-auto-sector-s-losses-climb-1.5777624#:~:text=The%20Ambassador%20Bridge%20closure%20has%20cost%20an%20estimated,filed%20a%20motion%20against%20the%20protestors%20on%20Thursday.
While this still can resolve in Scott's favour due to technicality, 10% was clearly an underestimate.
Interesting question. I hadn't considered this kind of strike/blockade action under this prediction.
One could quibble about whether loss of revenue for a company is equivalent to physical damage with repair costs. I'm not sure which interpretation of that is better.
"Viktor Orbán loses power in Hungary (60%)"
I don't know what "loses power" means here precisely, but a 60% estimate of him losing the election is wildly off. In my experience, basically every sensible person in Hungary thinks that a small-margin Orbán win is the most likely scenario. I mean, it's not impossible that he loses, but it's surely below 50%.
As a brazilian , I can´t agree with this bullish analysis of Bolsonaro´s chances of reelection , 50 % seems a lot right now. He is pooling worse than any other who was able to be re-elected (i.e: Temer does not count). I would to read counterarguments
“…based on Vox’s 22 Predictions For 2022 and and Matt Yglesias’ predictions…“ has two “and”s in it.
"at least $250 million in damage from a single round of mass protests"
How is "single round" defined?
Can that be n days in m cities with n, m > 1, assuming they all those individual protests share the same cause (assuming there is a specific one, that can be pointed to)?
Yglesias is too optimistic about inflation. My predictions for "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers" change over 2022:
≥5% increase 90%
≥6% increase 70%
≥7% increase 50%
≥10% increase 20%
This inflation is caused by Trump and Biden printing money to pay for the Covid stimulus at the same time that overall production fell, and it's going to take at least a couple of years to work through the system.
Surprisingly, in my 5 minutes of research I adjusted way down on Yglesias 2 and a little up on Yglesias 3. I was expecting to agree with 80% since it's likely to be a red year and the Senate skews red anyway, but the particular seats up for election look good for Democrats. They aren't defending any Trump-won seats, and I expect these midterms to lean red rather than be a red wave. That means the states I judge to be at risk of flipping are Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Nevada. I didn't have time to look up each individual approval rating, but if I remembered right, most of these Senators are reasonably popular in their states. I think Georgia is more likely than not to flip, but the rest are (individually) more likely than not to remain blue. Altogether I do think at least one will flip, but I wouldn't put my confidence at 80%.
As for Yglesias 3, the next-reddest states after those 5 are Illinois and Washington. Even in a wave election I don't see those flipping. 80% is too low.
76 is missing a number
77-79 Per year? Per month? Per second? Projected over its entire future existence?
82 Is that 6 meetups per city, or 6 meetups total? If total, would it change the meaning of the sentence if you just deleted the first "6"?
As long as people are hanging around here forecasting, might as well enter the 7th annual version of my contest, which looks much like this: https://forms.gle/P3tR8xccsYjYTi5A9 (late entries are fine, just not eligible for the prizes: a book and a bowl of pho)
how is >66% US population fully vaccinated (by current standards) against COVID being evaluated? does this mean Jan 2022 standards (not boosted), Jan 2022 standards (boosted), or the standards in Dec 2022?
I like how Yglasias specified CPI when talking about 'inflation'. i know there is a general understanding that when officaldom talks about inflation they mean the CPI, but they are truly not the same thing.
I find many econ ideas are purposefully or needlessly convoluted and looking into them to unpack what they are saying means a lot. Out of the three big ones I hear most often, GDP, Unemployment, and Inflation....the offical numbers are representing a very narrow and very politically driven set of figures which get reported.
I'd encourage anyone to research further into what is and is not included in the CPI number and see if you think that value represents the inflation you experience in your own life.
It does not include any information about the money supply or real estate prices or industry. It also uses a crazy substitution principle to try to 'mimic' what real world buyers might do.
So if the price of beef goes up and chicken is cheaper, they'll assume for you that you'll switch to buying chicken instead. So.....this number is NOT telling you about the changes in the price of goods then. It takes real inflation and a real upward movement in prices and finds a way through biased arbitrary selection to remove that inflation from their calculation of inflation.
Same with electronics which are one of the worst offenders. Buying a new phone or computer after 2-3 years? Say you're a 'I want the flagship phone' type of buyer...If that phone was $1,500 a few years ago and is $2,000 today, then the price you'll pay has gone up for 'the same' product of the flagship phone.
But they'll pretend that the new 2nd or 3rd tier phones are equally if not more powerful than the ones from a few years ago or have longer battery life or any number of arbitrary selections they make to pretend you can now get 'the same' phone for $800 instead. Every single year for around 20 years they've had this nice negative figure to modulate the overall basket in any way they wish using whatever choices they want to make that year in officialdom.
If you have this much freedom of choice or degrees of freedom in what you're doing...then you can say almost anything you want to say. In a deep dive on this, even 10% of this level of freedom of choice would see Scott lambasting a psychiatric drug study and saying how we'd be utter fools for using it or relying on it to tell us about that drug. They can pick and choose every single variable and arbitrarily include or exclude things such that every year the CPI 'metric' is measuring a different thing while attempting to lie to you about how they're measuring the same 'conceptual' idea of their guesstimate of consumer choices...a concept whose components are redefined every time.
And do we go back and update the CPI to a 'real one' after we interview lots and lots of people to get a refined measurement of consumer behavioural changes in buying choices? Nope! There is not even a hint of a notion that officaldom would ever do that with their CPI.
They are not doing science or the lower religious artform of economics, they are not seekers of truth or trying to tell us something worth knowing about the world. The lack of updates, accuracy, or even an attempt to do this tells you all you need to know. The official CPI is a political and propaganda tool to influence financial markets first and foremost.
It is a pretend game of counting and not counting major categories of prices which affect people's lives...real estate up 30% in your area while Blackrock goes on a buying spree spending 20-50% above market rates? Buying a home is the single largest purchase in the average person's lifetime....don't worry! We DIDN'T count that in 'inflation' or CPI specifically.
Truly this is inconceivable! In the classic meme sense of Princess Bride 'I do not think that word means what you think it means'
CPI is so wonky, manipulated, politically driven, and diverts so very very far from reality and what people's lives are like that I'd assert it cannot be anything other than a lie and is a part of the propaganda machine more than it is is part of any academic or trustworthy way to attempt to describe changes in the real economic landscape.
homes are capital - not a consumer good. Shelter is a consumer good, and that's why CPI uses rent.
> But they'll pretend that the new 2nd or 3rd tier phones are equally if not more powerful than the ones from a few years ago or have longer battery life or any number of arbitrary selections they make to pretend you can now get 'the same' phone for $800 instead.
What do you mean "pretend". This is just true. No one is pretending.
which grocery store do you shop at? I think the P(most customers masking in Safeway) << p(most customers masking in BiRite/Berkeley Bowl)
against FP you have Emmanuel Macron at 65% but against MY you only have 60% (technically I could see it the other way because MY only says reelected but FP has reelected president of France so it should be X% and X.0000001% where EM is appointed to some other position and then runs and wins reelection)
I would like to see some more skin in the game predicting about education around here. Too much Bryan Caplan and Freddie DeBoer (sorry guys), plus motivated reasoning inform the discussion. As a first step in a remedy to this here is a market that is OBVIOUSLY mispriced. https://manifold.markets/JohnBuridan/will-any-us-state-excel-its-previou
The Metaculus team is always excited to see Scott's yearly predictions. We actually made a short forecasting series featuring a number of the above questions if folks would like to predict along with them: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9680/scott-alexanders-2022-predictions/
Fun! for the betting market, I'm just following Scott.
Except for the chance of kid, If he's really trying to make a baby, I'm saying ~80%, but I don't know that's true so I'm going to go 50% of making a baby... which is betting with my heart. :^)
Having a kid changes your whole outlook on life. It's magical and a pita.
maybe off topic, but not sure a better place to answer a q i've been exploring a while: what is the best corporate prediction market software out there? looking for something cloud-based to build out with teams, and my hacked version in google sheets doesn't exactly inspire confidence or confidentiality.
Kudos for putting predictions out there.
But leave out the personal ones. No way to independently judge them and they are irrelevant to anyone else but you anyway.
I see them mostly as padding your success rate under the presumption that you know you.
You have inconsistent predictions for Macron being reelected, with one at 65% and the other at 60%.
He's addressed this before. Those are the prices of the markets, but the markets have fee to high to arbitrage between them.
Very Interesting. I also made the same predictions for the contest.
There are a few areas where I disagree to a major extent with the predictions offered by Scott Alexander, Vox Future Perfect and Matt Yglesias. Here is a quick rundown (those predictions with more than 25% difference)…My predictions are in the row below the original prediction.
- PredictIt thinks Joe Biden is most likely 2024 Dem nominee (80)
My prediction: 40% - I feel like if Democrats loose the midterms, then Biden will just resign on his own and Harris will step up. Also, other Democrats could be making a bit of a fuss about him if he doesn't deliver...
- Dow above 35K (90)
50%: Already, the Dow is showing signs of struggle. If the Fed raises rates, then it's hard to see the Dow to continue to being as strong...
- Inflation for the year below five percent (90)
50%: That was already said last year that inflation would only be "transitory"...well that wasn't the case ....so why should it change this year...only if the Fed raises the rate quite a bit...but will they?
- Starship reaches orbit (90)
50%: To be honest, I don't know much about it, but considering Musk's track record in getting products to the markets in a timely fashion (Roadster?), I don't think it's that realistic...
->66% US population fully vaccinated (by current standards) against COVID (70)
95%: Didn't that already happen? Anyway, looks to be veeery achievable …
- Masks still required on US domestic flights (60)
30%: I don't really see the point in this...if there are tests before every flight, and/or vaccine mandates, then why insist on masks (especially if they are just surgical masks?).
- New legal US real-money prediction market at least half as big as Kalshi (5)
50%
and -New illegal but easy-to-use market satisfying the above (20)
50%: I don't know much about these, so I just said 50%...
- Inflation for the year under three percent (FP: 80; SA: 80)
10%: That seems like a ridiculously high number...I think it's really unrealistic to have substantially lower inflation this year...oil prices are still rising, as are many other input prices for many goods...
-Democrats will lose their majorities in the House and Senate (FP: 95; SA: 90; Matt Yglesias also predicted this event, saying 90)
50%: Yeah, like I said this seems to bullish on the Republicans...they probably will win the house, but both the house and senate? That didn't happen in 2010, and while Biden is now less popular than Obama was back then, the difference isn't that huge, and Republicans are now much more of a non-mainstream party...
-Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (FP: 65; SA: 60)
40%: This also seems rather high...I mean it's been the law of the land for so long...don't think most judges would want to change it, and opening up a whole new can of worms...
- Jair Bolsonaro will be reelected president of Brazil (FP: 55; SA: 50)
30%: Well, he's badly trailing in the polls, and seems to be very unpopular...of course they said that about Trump, but Lula is no Hillary...so except if he rigs the election, or Lula gets jailed, I don't see him winning...
- China will NOT reopen its borders at any point during the first half of 2022 (FP: 80; SA: 90)
60%: I am not sure...how long can they really go with this strategy? Probably this year, but then they would have to rethink if it's not a net disbenefit...
- 20% of US kids between 0.5 and 5 years old will get at least one COVID vaccine by year's end (FP: 65; SA: 65)
40%: Don't think it's that realistic to be honest, as so many anti-vaxxers are people with children...also, maybe there won't be as much pressure for people to get vaccinated anymore?
- A psychedelic drug will be decriminalized/legalized in at least one more US state (FP: 75; SA: 75)
50%: Hard to say, but I would be less bullish on it...Cannabis yes, but these types of drugs (LSD?) seem not to be as popular with the broader public so IDK...
- AI will discover a new drug promising enough for clinical trials (FP: 85; SA: 85)
50%: I don't think AI is advance enough....
- Norway will win the most medals at the 2022 Winter Olympics (FP: 60; SA: 60)
30%: Not sure why a small country like Norway should be the favorite? I mean Russia, the US or even Canada sound more like favorites to me...
- Democrats lose at least two Senate seats (MY: 80; SA: 80)
30%: Which ones? I think they might loose NH, maybe GA but probably not AZ... Though I think Democrats can win PA, and possibly WI and/or NC...so on net its -1 to +1, so 0 net seats on average...
- Liz Cheney loses primary (MY: 80; SA: 80)
50%: I don't know...possibly, but I would give her higher chances than this though...
The predictions from Macron seem ridiculously low. I've seen an analysis from the Economist (https://www.economist.com/interactives/france-2022) that gave Macron 90% odds of winning, and that matches both my intuition and the polls. His only remotely serious opponent is Pecresse, and he's still projected to win against her (I'm really puzzled anyone could prefer Pecresse over Macron, but I could see Pecresse winning). Everyone else has no chance.
I'm not into prediction markets, but I'm tempted to actually get in on this one. Either the market is seeing something I'm not or it's suffering from american-centrism and guessing wildly off the mark.
Inflation <5% at 90%. Really? I would not dare to put that higher than 50%. It is already spiking at 7% right now. Labor shortages, oil market is very tight with limited drilling inventories in US shale fields at lower break even prices. And supply chains will see more pain with China sticking to zero Covid in 2022.
If you put a major flare up in Ukraine at 50%, then that alone could push inflation above 5%. Since Russia is a major commodity supplier. And any interuptions to export could send commodity prices flying.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this: at the beginning of 2018 (slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/15/five-more-years/) you gave Roe v. Wade being overturned a 1% chance. Now you give it 60%. Regardless of what actually happens, at this point you'd have reduced your money to a 60th of the total if you'd bet on this.
I'm amazed anyone would ever give Roe being overturned a 1% chance, let alone under a Republican president and senate, with 2 or 3 liberal or moderate justices soon likely to die or retire, let alone someone as good at prediction as you. I guess I'm just asking (light-heartedly, with no offence intended): what on earth were you drinking when you made that earlier prediction?
You make $400000/year with the blog? Awesome, I am impressed! But how is this possible?
> Dow above 35K: 90%
A bullish position given that the Dow has been hovering around 35K recently. Why so much confidence?
> No recession in 2021 (90%) SELL to 80%
Hmm, what kind of bull is this?
> Medical establishment reverses course and officially says any of Vitamin D, HCQ, or ivermectin is actually effective against COVID: 1%
Also surprising. Earlier you gave a 10% chance that ivermectin works ... is there new data that made you update even more against ivermectin? Or is it just that you think they won't "officially" support it unless the effect size is shown to be unexpectedly large?
> Fewer than 10K daily average official COVID cases in US in December 2022: 20%
...for reference this would be below the 2021 low point on June 20, 2021, and below the low point during the 2020 lockdowns. So, it's obviously unlikely: it would require no new variant-of-concern to arise, and it would also require immunity that endures long enough to prevent flare-ups. Alternately, a genuine apocolypse could cause this result, or a halt to the gathering of statistics.
> At least three dates with a new person: 30%
This I did not expect, Mr. Groom, especially since you said in 2014 that you were asexual.
> The Biden administration will set the social cost of carbon at $100/ton or more (70%): HOLD
Wait, what effect does this number have? I thought it seemed very high as a carbon tax, but low as a estimated social cost (negative externality).
Let's see... reported total emissions are 40.5 GtCO2 in 2019 (38 in 2020). One GtC equals 3.67 GtCO2 so that's 11.04 GtC ... and the IMF says there's $5.9 trillion global "subsidies" for fossil fuels BUT the IMF gratuitously redefined the word "subsidies" to mean "subsidies and tax breaks plus negative externalities" and the actual "subsidies" part of that is only 8% of the total, but "social cost" obviously refers to negative externalities which is more like 90%... so my calculator thinks the negative externality is about $480/ton according to the IMF. So either they meant to say "$100/ton of CO2" rather than "of carbon", or I've made an error, or the US has a huge disagreement with the IMF...?
> 2022 will be warmer than 2021 (80%): HOLD
Hmm, not unreasonable. Even though there were some huge heatwaves in 2021, especially the record-smashing Pacific Northwest heat dome, 2021 was still a La Niña year (https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/) and below trend (https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/). But note that the latest expert prediction is that there is potentially another La Niña this year: "La Niña is likely to continue into the Northern Hemisphere spring (67% chance during March-May 2022) and then transition to ENSO-neutral (51% chance during April-June 2022)": https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
Thus, global warming is doing a nontrivial amount of work in this prediction. I endorse it though.
> Bongbong Marcos will be elected president of the Philippines (55%): BUY to 60%
Am wondering how you came to have any opinion on this.
11. Saudi Arabia and Israel establish diplomatic relations (60%) SELL to 50%
Israel's FM and PM-in-waiting is Yair Lapid. He anagrams to "Paid Riyal". This is not a coincidence, because nothing is ever a coincidence.
Looking back on 2022, most of this was not on the mark..