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.
There are huge disagreements between different forecasting platforms about whether the Olympics will happen or not. Surely, the questions are different in the ways meaningfully affecting their resolutions; but I still can't comprehend the contradictions.
Here are the questions (along with the important bits of clarifications):
- Good Judgement Open: Before 1 May 2021, will it be officially announced that the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and/or Paralympics will be canceled? Postponement(s) alone would not count.
- Polymarket: Will the Tokyo Summer Olympic...
Prior (Poisson process): Russia has invaded three times in the past 20 years (Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, Ukraine 2022). Call that \(\frac{3 + 1 invasions}{22 + 1 year} \approx \) 20%/year. Remove a 1/6th because we are 1/6 of the way through the year to get \(\approx\) 17%
In the past there's been 3-month+ lead times where Russia's amassed troops around another country. If we say Russia does not have such a troop build-up now and a 3 month lead-time is required 80% of the time, we're down to 13% chance of an invasion this year. But perhaps Russia _...
I went 18% -> 14%. The bombings and the Russian watniks' reactions indicate there is no need for Putin to use nukes. A large-scale conventional bombing is sufficient to please the hawks, even after major humiliations like the Crimea bridge explosion.
Resolving positively today, February 23, 2022 at 6:49pm Pacific Time based on:
1. Russian President Vladimir [Putin's emergency speech](https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1496718133746405377?s=20&t=8Y5JHlLf4bdKX2yyaefk5Q) stating ["We have decided to launch a special military action"](https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1496678639911510024).
2. US President Joe Biden's [statement](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/23/statement-by-president-biden-on-russias-unprovoked-and-unjustified-attack-on-ukraine/): "The ...
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 ...
@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.
@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.
## 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...
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...
# 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 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 ...
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%)...
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.
I understand that this is a legitimate topic for a question, but I just feel that it's a bit on the ridiculous side since the odds are so incredibly low that even 1% is several orders of magnitude too high. as far as I'm concerned. For instance, the man widely seen as the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court is in an interracial marriage, as are the Vice President (arguably the second-most powerful Democrat in the country) and the Senate Minority Leader (arguably the second-most powerful Republican in the country). I legitimately think there's ...