This resolved prematurely. The 2026 resolve date gives plenty of time for COVID-19's origin story to change. (The other question related to natural origin has not resolved, yet, either.)

FWIW, I think this was a very well-operationalized question.

wildly optimistic predictions drawn by the crypto-technologist population of metaculus

I think Metaculus should implement "seasons".

The top 10 are uncatchable if they continue to make predictions.

That's reasonable in a sense, but unkind to new entrants.

Each year, reward the top ## with a trophy/indicator that attaches to their profile, and reset the score. There can be longer term insignia, too, like overall rank. Call of Duty: MW employed a similar system.

It'd give new players an incentive to stick around.

@Jgalt

Disagree. That's standard investigative practice.

@JonathanRay

Jury trials are not fully rational processes and voters north of the Mason-Dixon line are giving black Americans the benefit of every doubt right now. Don't look at this like it's a physics problem that can be simply solved.

@AnuragKashyap

I expected your prediction to be lower based upon the linked article, but after reading it, I agree with your caution. "It probably came from a standard animal pathway, but we don't really know."

That's pretty pedantic, my man. Any reasonable person reading this question knows that he's running for president, and if he's no longer running for president, he's "dropped out" under the common perception of that phrase.

@Vincitvincimus

You write exactly like a Chinese propagandist for The Global Times.

— edited by Reprisal

@notany

fwiw I agree and think that Metaculus should run "seasons" like many other online games.

I'd like to see metrics based upon brier score and also calibration.

Yang has no chance. It's nice of him to highlight the risks of automation, and that's about it.

@Anthony wrote:

I don’t think most...in their heart, want to be given something... People want to work for what they get.

People say they want to work for what they receive, because they've already done the second-order thinking, and they know that if they say they'd love free stuff, they'll be labelled a free-loader by the extremely vocal minority who hold that as a real belief. Most people would gladly accept free money/food/whatever.

Imagine if they did this. It would be an accusation that China was intentionally developing a biological weapon of mass destruction. They won't publicly make this claim, even if they believe it internally. Chinese authorities clearly cannot be trusted, as we acknowledge when we refuse to treat Chinese sources as credible for question resolution. If Chinese leadership continue their forays into genetic engineering, then I fear that violent global conflict is inevitable. I cannot imagine many moral justifications for war nowadays. But here's one: ...

@Anthony

That standard doesn't seem workable.

As an example, Snowden released a whole trove of information, some of which was shared between multiple news organizations but was nonetheless never published for safety reasons. That would count as "public" under your definition, which I'm not sure makes sense.

(I don't have strong feelings about this, but the above came to mind.)

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

@AngraMainyu

Read charitably, those are arguments supporting a lower probability prediction. There's nothing wrong with posting analysis.

Too often people here complain when they're "forced" to read something they disagree with. It may shit up the comments section a little, but true spam can be removed, and the remainder may provide useful signal.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-china-scientist…

"There has been no independent verification of his claim, first reported by The Associated Press, and it has not yet been published..."

This question resolved prematurely.

Until Chinese authorities publish data that can be audited, anything they say about this matter is pure public posturing.

I agree, unfortunately, with AngraMainyu.

"Unfortunately" because I didn't know that Articles must be transmitted to the Senate; it does not happen automatically.

It's like the difference between indictment and arraignment.

A prosecutor can obtain an indictment that he never attaches to a defendant, either due to lack of an extradition arrangement or abatement by death.

Similarly, here, the House impeached Trump, but Trump is yet to be served with process. The lack of #2 doesn't mean #1 didn't occur.

Toyota produced 10,000,000 vehicles in 2017.

Honda produced 10,000,000.

Hyundai produced 7,000,000.

GM and Ford each produced over 6,000,000.

Tesla produced 240,000 in 2018. 40x less production.

This will never happen. For Jotto's benefit I will write that the chances of this happening are -vanishingly- tiny. I wish I could predict 0%.

It's not even Musk's stated goal. This entire project was just a way for him to accelerate the adoption of EV tech across the industry. He never intended that this company be successful.

— edited by Reprisal

The current response illustrates the forecasting challenge: whenever predicted default rate approaches the criterion levels, the government may voluntarily forebear and forgive payments.

Also, am I correct in assuming that the default rates for this question pertain only to federal loan programs, and not to privately issued student loan default rates?

I'm very ambiguous as to whether the $1B is for a 100km-radius locale or aggregated across the whole United States, and that criteria significantly impacts my forecast. Plz advise.

The 100km-radius limitation seems to apply to all 3 prongs of the test, but I would like to confirm.

— edited by Reprisal