# RyanBeck Candidacy Hi everyone, I'm Ryan. I've been forecasting since 2020 and have been active here since early 2021. I'm in the top 50 in [all-time points earned](https://www.metaculus.com/rankings/) on Metaculus, I've forecasted on 988 separate questions, authored [51 questions](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=author:RyanBeck), and authored [4 notebooks](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?status=notebook&search=author:RyanBeck). I'm interested in becoming a moderator because I think forecasting is important and I'd like to see it grow ...

@Jgalt the person quoted seems to be distancing themselves from this assessment a bit.

Does that mean that this video shows preparations for a nuclear release? Not really. There are other more likely explanations. 1) It could be a form of signalling to the West that Moscow is escalating 2) Russian RVSN forces usually train extensively during autumn 3) Russia may conduct GROM strategic deterrence exercise in October, so this train could be showing a prep for this drill.

**EDIT 3-27-22: I've updated the below into a Metaculus Journal essay which fixes the issues I mentioned and revises my forecast as well as makes other improvements. I haven't edited the comment below in case anyone wants to see what changes. [Predicting Polygenic Scores for IQ](https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10292/predicting-polygenic-selection-for-iq).** **EDIT 3-20-22: I discovered an error in how I was using Karavani et al.'s formula to estimate gain in IQ, it was resulting in an underestimate of gains. To my knowledge the majority of the infor...

@gmc it may be a bit ridiculous, but people have been saying ridiculous things about it in the wake of the draft abortion decision leaking. I think there's value in Metaculus putting a number on things some people have ridiculous views on and it's useful as a place to point people toward if they want a more reasonable estimate of the likelihood.

I think the views of Michael Kofman are worth updating on. He [wrote an article on January 24](https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/putins-wager-in-russias-standoff-with-the-west/) arguing that Russia was likely to launch a large scale invasion of Ukraine, and even though I didn't find this article until just now it's still worth reading. Note the following quote, which seems quite prescient: >Prediction is always a fraught business, but it seems plausible that Russian forces would seize Ukraine’s eastern regions, as well as the southern port city of Odess...

[Newsweek - Exclusive: Putin Treated for Cancer in April, U.S. Intelligence Report Says](https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-putin-treated-cancer-april-us-intelligence-report-says-1710357) >Vladimir Putin's health is a subject of intense conversation inside the Biden administration after the intelligence community produced its fourth comprehensive assessment at the end of May. The classified U.S. report says Putin seems to have re-emerged after undergoing treatment in April for advanced cancer, three U.S. intelligence leaders who have read the reports te...

Thanks for the kind words @johnnycaffeine, I'm excited to work with the Metaculus team and community and I look forward to helping make Metaculus even better than it already is!

@Sergio their forecast for the next month is 5.3% (see the summary tables).

Found [this very rough estimate](https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/will-finland-and-sweden-join-nato-now/) of how long it could take: >What a fast-track process would look like to decide upon Swedish and Finnish membership remains to be seen. It would surely obviate the Membership Action Plan process that has been used to admit every NATO member starting with the 2004 enlargement round and which would likely apply to a country like Kosovo, which has already asked for accelerated membership in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. St...

@kievalet they also gave a higher chance to it than the crowd here did at the time their predictions were made.

I really wish there was an option for discrete answers, at least on numerical questions. The current method is kind of frustrating and I feel like the points system breaks down and responses become non-intuitive. For example, on [this question](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/7628/-va-4-yr-colleges-requiring-covid-vaccine/) there are 16 discrete possibilities, 0 through 15. If I were forecasting this I would put somewhere around 55% probability on 14, 40% on 15, and 1 to 2% or so on each of 11, 12, and 13. In trying to get somewhere close to that usi...

@(james_) as the moderator who approved this question I'd like to state that I didn't anticipate the possibility of both of them being awarded money. That said, I do think using the net amount is reasonable. Question authors and moderators are far from experts on the questions here, and there's a tradeoff between covering a lot of interesting questions and covering only a few questions extremely accurately. This may result in underspecified questions at times, and in the interest of having a functioning site in my opinion it's useful to allow for some am...

Just wanted to say thanks for running this set of challenges and putting these questions together. I'd seen a few AI questions previously and passed on them since I know very little about AI, but the challenge format (and cash incentive) motivated me to dive in and research them. I've definitely learned some cool stuff I had no idea about before from researching some of the questions and it's gotten me more excited about future AI and computing progress.

@(NoUsernameSelected) yeah it's hugely different for a reason in my opinion, I don't think these questions are related at all. The +30 IQ question would take some kind of crazy advanced drug or surgery to achieve, while this question would take some significant advancement in embryo selection technology and knowledge. The latter one at least has a plausible path to be accomplished (figure out how to get more embryos from IVF or stem cells, continue genome wide association studies on a larger scale to strengthen the known relationship between IQ and genes...

@(RyanBeck) additionally, we wanted to point out that the requirement in 3c is fairly extreme and we're not sure based on the predictions that forecasters are appreciating it fully. For the AI's log score to exceed the community's on each of the first 100 questions to resolve would be an amazing feat, one that (in my view) would require a level of skill not just better than humans but far exceeding the capability of any human. The community prediction is very good in general, and beating that on average is already impressive, but to beat it on each indiv...

Thank you for sharing your thoughts here in this fortified essay, and thanks for providing falsifiable forecasts. I have a lot of respect for anyone willing to do that publicly, and I'd love to see more people do this. I have some thoughts on your essay which I've included below. #Government Debt Theory I take the transitory view. To me it seems like there's more going on here than can be explained by the Government Debt Theory. For example, prior to 2021 core CPI inflation [hadn't risen above 2.5% for long in the last 20 years](https://fred.stlouisfed...

I propose adding Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard to the public figures list. Quote: >MR. BULLARD:...I’m now expecting the unemployment rate in 2022 to breach the 3 percent threshold... >... >MR. DERBY: So you – just to – just to be clear, so you expect the unemployment rate to go under 3 percent. >MR. BULLARD: Yes. In 2022. Link: https://archive.is/scxL9#selection-509.0-513.27 Source: wsj.com (archived) Prediction Date: January 12, 2022 Related Metaculus Question: [What will be the lowest US unemployment rate ...

This NPR article from February 4th says there are about 70k permanently stationed in Europe, plus another 7k rotating through NATO countries as part of operation Atlantic Resolve, plus 2k newly deployed from the US, most of them to Poland. So that would total around 79k.

It also mentions that 1k troops were being shifted from Germany to Poland, and another 8.5k in the US were placed on heightened reserve.

I've edited the background because I recently learned that the US has actually defaulted or at least made late payments a number of times. So I believe the line below which originally appeared in the background is not correct. >However, the U.S. has never actually defaulted on its sovereign debt. I've replaced it with the information below: >The US has failed to pay debt obligations on time on several occasions. [This Reason article](https://reason.com/2021/11/19/no-the-united-states-has-not-always-paid-its-debts/) describes five cases which could be ...

I'm seeing a lot of weight below 500 so I think this comment from @joshbblake would be useful to copy over from the other question because it influenced me.

Endemic infections in Africa are ~2k per year which should lower bound this.