# NoUsernameSelected Candidacy I've been an avid Metaculus power user since February 2020. My favorite prediction topics are AI, the space industry, and mid-to-far future questions, though I'll predict on almost anything from time to time. Reasons to vote for me: * I like Metaculus as a forecasting platform more than any other I've tried or seen so far, and I want to help it grow. I'll strive to be welcoming, helpful, and respectful as a community moderator. * I'm a top 100 forecaster with predictions on over 700 questions, have submitted several ques...

@tryingToPredictFuture A 40% possibility turning out to be true is hardly a failure. It should happen nearly half the time if you're well calibrated.

Metaculus keeps switching itself back to light mode every so often, which I'm not a fan of. Could this be fixed? Or just make dark mode the default?

@WilliamKiely I probably have Covid (albeit nearly asymptomatic) as I've been isolating with someone who got a positive test result a few days ago.

Don't have a date yet, but I'll report back once I get a test done.

A YouTuber by the name of [BarelySociable](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9PIn6-XuRKZ5HmYeu46AIw/videos) claims that Satoshi's real identity is [Adam Back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Back) in a three-part, roughly 90 minute documentary. It doesn't provide proof beyond reasonable doubt, but it *does* make a pretty solid case for it being Back in the last part. Overall quite thorough and well-researched. [Part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kav2K1DVWo) - [Part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMWnaR5uJxQ) - [Part 3](https://www.youtube...

What if North Korea merges peacefully with the South or otherwise ceases to be an independent country?

Feels like it might be a bit unfair to give an ambiguous resolution if the land that used to be North Korean becomes part of a larger democratic state.

@nagolinc

I agree with the "much more livable" part, but physical distance doesn't particularly matter here - travel time does.

In that regard, getting to Mars would take 6-8 months (assuming optimal fuel use + you can only go once every 2 years), while reaching America from Europe via ship would've taken ~4-6 weeks. Still a fair bit slower, but not 40,000 times slower.

@Roko They don't need to take Lviv for this question, only to enter it with at least 100 troops.

@Trunton It was removed because the SOTA model is already superhuman on the dataset (NarrativeQA) the question asked about.

@Matthew_Barnett Does this mean 1 of the 3 required AI achievements for this question have already been reached?

— edited by NoUsernameSelected

  • When will a quantum computer running Shor's algorithm (or a similar one) be used to factor one of the RSA numbers for the first time?
  • When will all of the RSA numbers be factorized?
[Introducing ChatGPT Plus for $20/month](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plus/) > The new subscription plan, ChatGPT Plus, will be available for $20/month, and subscribers will receive a number of benefits: > * General access to ChatGPT, even during peak times > * Faster response times > * Priority access to new features and improvements > ChatGPT Plus is available to customers in the United States, and we will begin the process of inviting people from our waitlist over the coming weeks. We plan to expand access and support to additional countries and...

The question will close the day before the launch day. Moderators may need to close it retroactively or keep it open for longer than currently set.

Shouldn't this question be closed now? I guess it will be in ~5 days regardless, but I feel like we should follow the rules as they're set out.

What if OpenAI release a bigger NLP model, but don't explicitly call it GPT-4? For example, maybe they come out with "GPT-3.5" or "GPT-X" or "Really Big Language Model 1000".

What if it's primarily, but not exclusively an NLP model? E.g. capable of working with text and images in the same neural net, but still overall "better" with text-only than GPT-3.

There are several options worth taking under consideration: * **Venus.** Possibly the best candidate to have harbored life in the past, but finding any evidence of it today seems unlikely, even with improved technology. There is some possibility of thermoacidophilic [extremophiles](https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2017.1783) living in the upper atmosphere, roughly 50 to 65 km above the surface. * **Mars.** Liquid water is widely thought to have existed on Mars in the past, and now can occasionally be found as [low-volume liquid brines](h...

Coronavirus: Air pollution and CO2 fall rapidly as virus spreads

Levels of air pollutants and warming gases over some cities and regions are showing significant drops as coronavirus impacts work and travel.

First round winners have been announced. It looks like 7 new prizes have been given out.

Might be time to update upwards.

20% territorial loss is quite a steep requirement for the biggest country in the world.

The breakup of the Soviet Union would have barely counted, as it lost only ~23% area despite breaking into 15 new countries. If Russia lost all territory even vaguely considered "disputed" today, it still wouldn't be anywhere near enough.

[EfficientZero: Mastering Atari Games with Limited Data](https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.00210) > Reinforcement learning has achieved great success in many applications. However, sample efficiency remains a key challenge, with prominent methods requiring millions (or even billions) of environment steps to train. Recently, there has been significant progress in sample efficient image-based RL algorithms; however, consistent human-level performance on the Atari game benchmark remains an elusive goal. We propose a sample efficient model-based visual RL algorith...