My predictions in the last few weeks (~80%) have been quite a bit higher than the community's for some time. So I thought it would be worthwhile to write out where I'm at. Thoughts/critiques are always welcome. I think it's worth trying to take a step back from the daily (or hourly) updates and think about what the likely endgame scenarios are. I see four major ones, starting with the clearest and ending with the muddiest.  1. **Ukraine folds**. Ukraine agrees to implement the Minsk agreement according to Russia's interpretation, and swear off applying ...

The Wuhan Coronavirus is looking like a pandemic event that could be serious enough to threaten this outcome.

@mumpskin But the US IC often makes bad predictions, such as, e.g. the prediction that the Afghani government would be able to keep control over Kabul for some time after US troops left.

## PeterWildeford Candidacy I'm a Metaculus power user (top 50 on forecasting and have written many good questions and made comments) and I want to see Metaculus forecast more things aligned with EA principles and EA research. I also run Rethink Priorities, which does a lot of EA research and heavily integrates Metaculus into our work (such as with the nukes tournament and other questions we've written). I'd like to see this integration continue, hence this candidacy. Note that I would be a moderator in my personal capacity, not in my capacity of Co-CEO...

Probably too late, but I’m not big fan of the down arrow for comments. A lack of positive likes sends a message just as much as down arrows without looking as negative.

— edited by Rexracer63

There is a highly popular entertainment website in Russia called [Pikabu](https://pikabu.ru/), with about [100M](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%83) visits per month. Basically, it's a Russian copycat of Reddit. Yesterday, the site's admins posted a quite interesting [report](https://pikabu.ru/story/pikabu_i_botyi_8860371) that might be of relevance. Some highlights: * the admins detected a massive increase in activity of bots / sock-puppet users * since January, they've deleted 35K bots * another large wave of the bots s...

@QI92756340QI This is about whether he’s PM at a particular point in time; he doesn’t have to remain PM until January 1. While very unlikely, it is possible he could make a comeback.

# michal_dubrawski ("Michał" on discord) Candidacy Hi, it was suggested to me that our mods might need more help. As most of you know I am not a native English speaker, and my English is as it is. I also might currently not have much time each week to work as a mod, but as Sylvain said on the discord it would be better to "have many hands doing a little bit of work, than rely on too few overworked mods". If the community accepts me as a mod this time, I will do my best to provide help, even if this wouldn't be much each week. This time up to thre...

I strongly urge people to start thinking about and writing new forecasting questions about the potential escalation of this conflict and its impact in the near and long term. What scenarios should we be watching for? What are the potential tail risks? What information would be the most useful for those working on de-escalation?

The collective insight of forecasters is needed right now. @moderators will be prioritizing relevant question submissions.

I’ve been working on developing a very rough casualty projection model to help answer these related questions. Bottom line, estimating under 25,000 deaths requires a near term end to the war. If it drags on, deaths in excess of 50,000 to 100,000 are very likely. Feedback is always appreciated. TL;DR for the normies who don’t spend their Friday nights doing this, with my pre-model guesses in parentheses. All will go upward as the war drags on: **Over 25,000: 62.5%** (up from 58%) **Over 50,000: 40%** (up from 31%) **Over 100,000: 30%** (up from 13%)...

Anyone interested in an in-person Meetup at the Taco Bell in Westfield, Indiana on the 1st of January 2025?

In Lex Fridman's latest podcast, Demis Hassabis states that DeepMind is in the middle of scaling up Gato.

(skip to 5:25–6:04)

I don't think you've really understood the 538 forecast. Or for that matter the 'shy trump voter' hypothesis, which seems very unlikely to exist given various analyses of different types of polling, but at least resembles a coherent thought.

What a fascinating question! As I see it, there are several differnet organizations that might hope to send humans to the moon in the next few decades: 1. China is very interested in eventually visiting the moon, using a mission architecture similar to Apollo. 2. Some private US company, like SpaceX or Blue Origin, could concievably put together a moon mission with 100% non-government money. 3. The US government, via NASA and perhaps also "commercial crew"-style contracts with private space companies. One complication is that, if NASA decided to reall...

@rQ9J-gBBv+sm

Areas of Ukraine already occupied (officially or de facto) by Russia as of December 11, 2021, will not trigger resolution.

Thank you for the warm welcome @Anthony! It’s been an honor to work with this amazing team for the last year, and I’m excited to take things to the next level and help accelerate Metaculus’s growth in the years ahead.

We have some exciting updates and opportunities on the horizon, with much more to come, and I’m confident that we have what it takes to keep growing the platform and strengthening our reputation and position as an innovation leader in the forecasting industry.

Onward, Gaia

@Anthony I think this should just close ambiguously and a new question should be opened.

It seems plausible at this point that it'll never be settled, so maybe requiring unanimity isn't a great idea for a longer resolution date.

@Eharding I wouldn't update on this one way or the other. I think that

P(Lukashenko says this | Putin is healthy) ≈ P(Lukashenko says this | Putin is ill)

Has there ever been a significant build up that has taken this long, this well publicised, by Russia before an invasion? Not for the last 3 or so decades. This doesn’t fit the fast-moving, extreme ambiguity MO of the Russians. If the main objective is to keep NATO out of Ukraine, (which it is https://intelwombat.com/russian-geopolitical-manoeuvres-the-ukrainian-question/) then what benefit is there in allowing NATO time to respond, sending in thousands of anti-armour weapons and giving western trainers time to skill-up the Ukrainians? Russian commande...

I confidently (85%) predicted this invasion a month ago, never going below 75% during the time. I think the following tricks helped me to better understand the situation: * Understand the soviet and the Russian culture (I was born in the USSR, so I'm having an unfair advantage here). This helped me avoid the common mind trap of believing that the grave consequences of the invasion will stop Putin * Know the history of the conflict. Many people still don't know that Russia has been making preparations for this war since 2004. Some people even missed the ...