Just want to say that I moved from Kyiv to Lviv on Feb 13 /entirely/ thanks to this prediction thread and the Metaculus estimates. (Still in Lviv but leaving Ukraine later today.)

It’s hard to estimate the impact, but at the very least I have saved myself an enormous hassle trying to move all my possessions, finding an apartment in Lviv, etc on very short notice — which would have happened otherwise. Of course, worse outcomes were possible too if things had played out a bit differently.

Thank you, everyone.

— edited by availablegreen

@casens To see this in my inbox:

"Metaculus Notifications <notifications\@mg2.metaculus.com>

Resolved: Will at least one nuclear weapon be detonated in Ukraine before 2023?

Was probably the scariest moment of the whole year to me.

DeepMind: [Gato🐈a scalable generalist agent that uses a single transformer with exactly the same weights to play Atari, follow text instructions, caption images, chat with people, control a real robot arm, and more](https://twitter.com/DeepMind/status/1524770016259887107) DeepMind publication: [A Generalist Agent](https://www.deepmind.com/publications/a-generalist-agent) >Abstract >Inspired by progress in large-scale language modelling, we apply a similar approach towards building a single generalist agent beyond the realm of text outputs. The agent, ...

@alexrjl add a smile to here if you think the community prediction was good but we got lucky (at avoiding the virus)/unlucky (at having correct resolution).

There is a pattern I see repeatedly with stories about North Korea that later turn out to be false. (Like the last time [Kim Jong-un was reported to be dead in 2016](https://www.nknews.org/2016/06/false-alarm-on-kim-jong-uns-death-shakes-south-korea/), or [the time he was reported to have been assassinated in Beijing in 2012](https://nationalpost.com/news/kim-jong-un-assassination-rumours-flood-twitter-weibo), or the time in 2008 "credible" publications like the BBC were giving airtime to a Japanese professor [who said Kim Jong-il died in 2003 and was re...

Came here to note this paper also. For the record, when I wrote the question this is the sort of system I had in mind to resolve it. I doubt this actual system resolves it, but a future version of this system that did perform well enough would satisfy the "unified system" criterion.

For reference, I surveyed battles/sieges listed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine not including ones involving Kyiv. Mauripol was first surrounded sometime in the period March 2-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol, so it's been holding out for 8-10 days. Mauripol has about 500k population. Kherson, which is around half the size of Mauripol (250k population) fell about 4 days after it was surrounded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kherson Kharkiv, with 1.5 million people, has been the site of battles s...

After transcribing the entire book and feeding it to GPT-3, I was able to get this response:

Question: What happened to the rabbit? Answer: The bear caught him and ate him.

My 'never predict on a question where the main thing you're forecasting is how a third party will evaluate a thing rather than the thing itself' rule may be long and poorly-written, but every once in a while it saves me 300 MIPs.

— edited by j.m.

The 100km clause is a reason to pin lower. This is a really, really weird definition of "large-scale rioting" that actually is more geared towards the question "will there be a really large riot somewhere in the United States in 2020" than "Will the US see large-scale rioting in 2020".

# RyanBeck Candidacy Hi everyone, I'm Ryan. I've been forecasting since 2020 and have been active here since early 2021. I'm in the top 50 in [all-time points earned](https://www.metaculus.com/rankings/) on Metaculus, I've forecasted on 988 separate questions, authored [51 questions](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=author:RyanBeck), and authored [4 notebooks](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?status=notebook&search=author:RyanBeck). I'm interested in becoming a moderator because I think forecasting is important and I'd like to see it grow ...

@GameTheory both your comments are in violation of our Etiquette rules 1 through 7 and our Moderation rule 3. I believe that's a record. To be explicit, your comments are:

  • Low quality.
  • Disrespectful.
  • Insulting.
  • Conflictual.
  • Strongly political.
  • Intolerant.
  • Calling for violence.

As a consequence I will ban you for a week. Please change your behaviour when you are back.

my apologies for the mistaken resolution notification. no points have been awarded, predicting will continue.

@Roon I have also detected what may be a sign of covert support for Trump.

All across the nation, in red states and blue states, people are hanging orange lights on their houses; many even displaying orange gourds on their doorsteps, sometimes with elaborately carved faces on them. The number of sightings has increased dramatically over the last two weeks and shows no sign of abating. I take this to be a coded sign of support for the orange candidate in the race.

As of right now, today is the first day since GJI launched their question on Jan 28 that the superforecasters are above the Metaculus community when you aggregate their options, 80% vs 75%:

  • 64%: Donetsk and/or Luhansk oblasts + other Ukrainian territory
  • 15%: Donetsk and/or Luhansk oblasts only (includes separatist- and Ukrainian-controlled areas)
  • 1%: Only other Ukrainian territory

NathanpmYoung Candidacy

I like forecasting and want to make it easy for people to do it. I spend 2-5 hours a week on here anyway and I think I could happily look over and moderate questions in that time. I run a weekly collaborative forecasting call on the discord.

@predictors I again apologize for the mistaken resolution email sent today. The fault is my own; and essentially comes down to me having more than one tab open and not seeing which question I was resolving, until it was too late. I know tensions are quite high, and this error caused significant distress. The Metaculus team will be working on safeguards to prevent this kind of error in the future.

Emails are (in a small way) a bit like bombs -- they can't be un-delivered.

Moscow Bureau Chief for the FT on Twitter:

Putin speaking now: he says Russia has recognized the separatist's claim to the whole Donbas. This is as close as you can get to declaring war.

For context, Ukraine controls ~70% of that territory.

— edited by ClayGraubard

@liljaycup Hodges seems pretty unimpressive to me - at the end of that interview he says he signed onto a letter calling for a no-fly-zone because “we have to do something”, which doesn’t inspire confidence in his reasoning. His comments about the huge Russian convoy were also contradicted by Michael Kofman in yesterday’s War on the Rocks podcast. Wouldn’t be that surprised if he’s just become a lazy talking head since leaving the military.

— edited by occamsbulldog