Does anyone know anybody in Ukraine? If so, can you please get them to tell you what the soil is like outside their house? It it muddy, or is it frozen?

Context: https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-invas…

— edited by johnnycaffeine

Several companies are aiming to deliver 1,000 qubit quantum computers by 2023.

Should we have some date range questions on qubit number milestones? Maybe 10,000 qubits, 100,000 qubits, 1 million qubits?

@qw2019 You’re a Ukrainian reserve officer? Have you been notified by the military that you need to be ready, or anything like that?

@johnnycaffeine The projected day high in Kyiv over the next two weeks is expected to below freezing each day except tomorrow, so I suspect it'll be frozen.

At this point it seems like if they were going to, they would've done so already, no?

Russia cyberattacks Ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/expect-w…

Russia is moving more military gear https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-moves-mor…

Saboteurs sent in to Ukraine. Believe that false flag ops will be created to justify invasion https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/14…

It looks likely that the invasion will start this weekend

— edited by nextbigfuture

I wonder why it moved from 60% to 32% in 2021?

This needs to be shorter-fused. Can we get it active today. Because the attack could be this weekend

— edited by nextbigfuture

I give it 2% (freak disaster probability) because no party to a war (America or China) has any real reason to fight one over Taiwan, and both parties appear to be rational decision-makers in initiating new foreign policy engagements. There is no real reason China would attack: Taiwan will not initiate a decoupling because many of it's industries are economically dependent on the mainland. There is no golden window of opportunity China is missing to take back the land or population, China's economy is growing in relative size to America's every year, if ...

Unlike Ukraine, the US is obligated by treaty to protect NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

US intelligence indicates Russia preparing operation to justify invasion of Ukraine https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/14/politics/u…

US warns Russia is sounding 'drumbeats of war' against Ukraine as crisis talks end with no breakthrough https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/13/politics/r…

@fldnflncs When not specified in the question text, the default is UTC

I think Metaculus would benefit from questions that directly predict the issues underlying bets rather than bets themselves. I'm quite interested in the underlying question here, but the metagame bet angle makes the title opaque and predictors' views harder to interpret (e.g., how many are betting that Holden will 'beat the spread' and how many are betting on the underlying infection curve question? and are these predictions properly calculated to account for Holden and Zvi 'betting at 60%' rather than at 50%?). Basically, I think the site is better of...

# Natural number question type Some questions seem to not need probability on points between natural numbers (numbers for counting or ordering, like 1, 2, and 2022). For example, date questions that use an annual measure (e.g., https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4931/when-will-the-woke-index-in-us-elite-media-top/ ) or exhibit a strict periodicity (e.g., https://www.metaculus.com/questions/8448/ranked-choice-voting-in-us-elections/ ) (as well as "count" questions) cannot practically resolve as 2025.2 or 2024-06-15 and could maybe be simplified by a "na...

Last two times the price was here the community prediction was 28% and 51%. Over time the community is becoming more bullish...

Just thinking about a base rate for this question (perhaps quite late in the game?), pulling data from Wikipedia's [List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_length_of_tenure), focused on 1970 to today: Prime Minister | Length served | Terms in office | Party | Start |||| Margaret Thatcher | 11 years, 208 days | 1 | Conservative | 1979 Tony Blair | 10 years, 56 days | 1 | Labour | 1997 David Cameron | 6 years, 63 days | 1 | Conservative | 2010 Edw...

What will be the share of Asians relative to share of U.S. population attending Harvard undergrad in 2032.

My view is this should be higher given the unprecedented buildup and the possibility of Russia "resolving" the Ukraine issue. But one argument for it remaining close to 50/50 could be that the balance of uncertainty maximizes Putin's leverage as he supposedly tries to negotiate with the West. US, NATO and Ukraine haven't budged at all so far, but it's also obvious that they really don't want to fight a war. Not too many wars of this scale had been fought since WW2 and we shouldn't underestimate the chance of a peaceful settlement. Another good argumen...

"Kind of sad that I had to say ex cathedra it had happened; I was hoping to make them debate whether it counted or not.

I also hadn't realized that betting had closed in September; otherwise I would have done it then so that the people who noticed could profit off their perceptiveness."

- Scott Alexander, commenting on a Reddit submission about this question.

Holmes has been convicted on four charges.