To some extent, I can't help but wonder if those predicting high probabilities on this question aren't underestimating exactly how difficult it would be to kill off every single human being on the planet in the span of just 77 years. Even if the entire human race were perfectly and totally sterilized tomorrow, for instance, there would probably still be some living humans in 2100, and that's an incredibly extreme case which relies upon a borderline magical approach. Most effects which would impact humanity on a global scale aren't going to kill off eve...

@(blednotik) Your point isn't unreasonable, but what if we consider the matter from a different perspective? 1) There actually was a time, not that long ago, where interracial marriage was illegalized. This effectively ended with a Supreme Court ruling. 2) Some people in America, on the basis of the Supreme Court likely overturning another precedent, are worried that this one might be overturned as well. 3) The people who are "worried" can probably be classified into two broad groups: those who are merely saying they are worried as a political tactic...

@(casens) To be entirely clear, while I'm technically entered into the Ukraine tournament, that's only because the site pushed me to enter into it when I initially predicted on certain questions, and my under-confidence bias ensures that I'm in no position to win any money in the tournament, so while that might be an apparent "conflict of interest," it's not an actual one from my perspective. Ambiguous resolutions, particularly on the topic of the Ukraine War, have not been charming, but insisting that the question of whether 25,000 people have died ...

@(ugandamaximum) While what you're writing was my intuition as well based upon the headline question, note that the body of the question explanation contains the following text: >They have used small amounts of chemical weapons in assassinations or assassination attempts against dissidents, both in Russia, against Alexey Navalny, and in the U.K., against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. So even in framing the question, an implication that direct poisonings "count" as chemical weapon usage was included. Whether that was the author's intention or not in inclu...

@(Jgalt) The argument upon which I would rely is to deny that marriage is actually a "legal right" in the first place, but instead suggest that it is a "purpose-driven institution." This actually doesn't seem intrinsically implausible to me on the face of it, and in some ways, actually makes more sense than the "legal right" perspective. It's not even entirely impossible (read: extremely low non-zero probability) that five of the sitting justices could be convinced to accept that position. This **could** be developed into some legal arguments against ...

@(ugandamaximum) It will likely not be carried out with 100% efficacy; many individuals will probably leave some portion of their assets abroad to hedge their bets, so to speak, **if** they feel they can hide them effectively. On the other hand, there are two strong motivators for at least moderate compliance: 1) If they get caught, their careers will be impacted. Anyone who has risen enough to be included in the directive probably cares more than a bit about their career. 2) Even if they think they'll be able to hide their foreign assets successful...

@(Furcas) You have asked what the point of this community is. Well, part of it is exchanging data, analysis, and reasoning in a way that leads everyone to a better understanding of the likelihood of certain outcomes. If you think the community median is not just overconfident but **grossly** overconfident to such an extent that it is damning, why not show your statistical work? That could be a very valuable contribution. What possible paths to extinction do you believe exist, how do you imagine them actually driving every single human population in ...

@(nextbigfuture) **Regarding South China Sea**, the United States has until now maintained regular behind the scenes communication with the Government of China in order to engage in behavior such as sailing ships through Chinese claimed waters without miscalculation or misunderstanding occurring. Americans could engage in their signaling, Chinese could respond in a largely rhetorical fashion, and both sides could feel like they made their respective points publicly while feeling comfortable that they understood one another privately. Recently, China h...

@(grimcosmo) The Russian army has around 900,000 active service members and about 2 million reservists, doesn't it? Obviously it's unlikely that the entire Russian army is going to flood into Ukraine, but the idea that Russia has nothing left to deploy seems to the mathematics of the matter. ​On top of that, there are reports of the possibility of Belarus joining the invasion: https://kyivindependent.com/national/sources-belarus-to-join-russias-war-on-ukraine-within-hours/ More generally, the idea that this is going "slower than expected" for Putin i...

@(RyanBeck) That could have been discussed further then. Instead, before the conversation was even really finished -- a person had responded just hours before, and I was personally considering whether or not to add something else -- the decision was made. It felt hasty, to be honest; why ask for community feedback in the first place if it's simply going to be ignored out of hand? It's not surprising to see people discontent. "Fairness" is heavily subjective, and "consistency" is also moderately subjective given it requires choosing the perspective...

@(nextbigfuture) The optimal strategy for dealing with Taiwan militarily is a long-term blockade. Most of Taiwan's energy comes from coal or natural gas imports; their ability to defend themselves would crash relatively quickly. Taiwan's food self-sufficiency is also fairly low in my understanding, so even if they entirely shut down their economy in order to preserve energy resources for defensive measures, they'd face a real starvation problem. In terms of simply dealing with Taiwan, China could bring it to its knees without much effort; it would n...

@(nextbigfuture) Satellites are meaningless here; China wouldn't be trying to hide anything. Quite the opposite, it would want the world to know, precisely because China doesn't want to actually have to shoot down incoming commercial airplanes or sink commercial ships. It would loudly announce it's blockade intentions, perhaps in terms similar to, "Starting today, all incoming or outgoing flights or sea shipments related to Taiwan are banned. Vessels attempting ingress or egress will be either seized or destroyed, and any company related to those ve...

@AXH From another perspective, each day that passed by did give us new information. Specifically, it gave us the information that for some sizeable portion of the question period, a positive resolution did not occur.

@(RyanBeck) Random idea: posts on Twitter are timestamped and searchable by date and time using [advanced search operators](https://github.com/igorbrigadir/twitter-advanced-search/), aren't they? The only unambiguous "outage" would be one where no new posts to Twitter were possible, and Twitter is a large enough system that users are trying to post things all throughout the day. If you abandoned all concerns about regionality and simply made the resolution condition something like, "Will a certain span of time go by without a new Tweet?" then you coul...

@(Sylvain) I know this would be better situated in the section about new feature requests, but given it's related to this question: is there any way we could get a build-in "scheduled notification" system to prompt us to review questions every so often? For example, setting a question to send the predictor an email weekly prompting reconsideration based upon new evidence? The settings wouldn't need to be particularly granular to be useful: even just a "weekly" or "monthly" reminder option would be very valuable, at least to me. Alternatively if thi...

@(withoutborders) Putting entirely aside the notion of what you might personally consider a "stupid idea" or not, it doesn't seem like a very "Russian" idea. Putin's entire approach to operations against Ukraine has been extremely measured: he tried to settle it non-militarily for **eight years**, he initated direct military action with a limited "special operation" rather than an actual declared war, he made a point of leaving large swaths of Ukraine essentially functional, he has repeatedly tried to open humanitarian coordidors when possible, his arm...

@(TemetNosce) Thanks for laying out your thoughts TemetNosce. When you say, "The second is simply that Putin has backed himself into a corner, and both rationally and irrationally (unfortunately) from his perspective relying on nuclear weapons (and more specifically, likely something more along the lines of nuclear artillery) may make sense. This is because nuclear artillery may be perceived as unlikely to be considered as escalatory as most forms of nuclear weapons, while still triggering an international response. Something he could then point to, a...

[Austria tells Ukraine EU fast-track procedure not possible](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/austria-tells-ukraine-eu-fast-track-procedure-not-possible/) >Ukraine’s accession to the EU cannot be achieved “in the next five to ten years”, said Austria’s EU and Constitutional Affairs Minister Karoline Edtstadler after recent comments from Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg on the matter caused controversy. >Schallenberg caused controversy after he suggested Ukraine look into different ways to get closer to the EU other than membe...

@randallburns Putin was just in public at Lomonosov Moscow State University a few days ago. Delaying resolution of this question on the basis of evidence free declarations by the President of Ukraine -- ones which are also unfalsifiable, given Ukraine has also claimed Russian uses "Putin body doubles," meaning even public appearances aren't good enough -- wouldn't really make much sense.

@kokotajlod Isn't this the same Kyrylo Budanov who predicted that the turning point of the war would be August, that the fighting would mostly have ended by the end of 2022 (in Ukraine's favor, to the point of reclaiming even Crimea), and that Russia would disintegrate because an "impossible to stop" coup was underway against Putin?