I say 1%. I get a feeling that many predictors do not understand what EU is. The question is not of the political will but of the practicalities of the process. EU is not a club that is joined just by handing a country a membership card. EU is a combination of several very complicated treaties and joining it requires long negotiations, overhaul of Ukrainian legislation, bureaucracy, and maybe the legal system. The process has taken many years for every country even after the accession has been supported by everyone. Then add the uncertainty of the war, t...

@SihaoFeng Is this just trolling or is there some other evidence than smoke coming out of a chimney in the winter?

@Bookie But were the forces really deployed the same way, a few kilometers from the border, all around Ukraine, with military field hospitals set up and so on? With the scale of 150k troops? Or is your opinion that this info is not reliable, I don't remember. Also, if the point is to threat and deter, why do the propaganda and the trolls clearly try to minimize the extent of deployment?

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I've been more bearish than most, but this made me adjust a bit upwards: https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1580168586626494465. Apparently a single can of tear gas on battlefield could trigger the conditions, if it just happens to get reported by 6 of those news sources. In hindsight, I think there should maybe be conditions on how many victims are affected or such, but too late for that now. It's a pity that many Metaculus questions end up to be dominated by probabilities related to interpretations of the conditions or how the outcomes happen to get ...

I guess I have to concur with the current commmunity prediction of 69%.

These numbers are very different from Betfair (exchange, not sportsbook!), where volumes are already > 1M$. There Biden has implied probability of winning election at 15%, and implied probability of getting nominated at 30%. PredictIt has higher probabilities, and is closer to metaculus, at 22% and 37% respectively. One could arbitrage today for a 5% profit after commission, but I maybe it's not so attractive for the 1.5 year timespan. I guess this shows some weakness of even the real-money prediction markets. This comment was originally posted on **Jo...

@tryingToPredictFuture I would be happy that they seem so incompetent, but they are also in charge of a nuclear weapons arsenal...

Previous Ukrainian deputy interior minister: '95% chance' of Russian invasion of some size. Could start tomorrow or the day after. https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/14964…

@ugandamaximum True, but this was just part of one sentence in a talk and questions, where he mostly blamed US and Nato for the problems.

I listened to (a translation of) the Putin-Scholz presser, and I heard nothing that sounded like de-escalation by Russia. Putin basically compared the situation to NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and also claimed there was a genocide going on in Ukraine. Asked about military plans, he said he's not going to comment on military movements, and said that all depends on what is happening on the ground and in negotiations. This all was of course wrapped in "diplomatic" language, but to me it sounded like direct threats with some plausible deniability thrown in. ...

@Glossy I reiterate I wish I had left out the "hope" language, because I'd like this site to provide objective predictions and have clearheaded discussions, whatever the issue. Even when it concerns the very lives of our children like here.

Well, now it is 100.0%

So, there was the meeting between Macron and Putin. French version of the outcome sounds almost optimistic. The Russian version not as promising at all: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67818. I'll downgrade to 75% since the negotiations seem to continue. On the other hand, there's nothing that would be inconsistent with Russia going on with the invasion plans, if they are really made. It's hard to say if there will be actual negotiations, or if Putin basically said that, ok, you can send me a proposal and I will read it. I mean, even if an invasi...

I'm predicting 80% now. I have a FEELING it's almost 100%, but maybe there are unknown unknowns. Just see tass.ru and ria.ru front pages (with google translate, e.g.). Listen to Putin and Lukashenka say that they are prepared for the sanctions, and that sanctions cannot be avoided anyway: https://youtu.be/jVZ4MHew4sI.

The hope I have left is that there are some elements in Russia that could stop Putin. Like military being hesitant and dragging their feet until situation somehow changes, or even a coup or such. If US intelligence would know of anything like this, they surely would keep their mouth very tightly shut. Or, since it is imaginable that Putin is just out of his mind, that also means that he could be so unstable he just calls the plan off some day. Hard to put numbers on this, but must be <10% scenarios.

The only plausible way to me for this to resolve positively is if a superhuman AI is reached in time, which develops the needed magical technology, and the world still stays recognizable enough that the actual revival, it's confirmation, etc. takes place. I gave it 1%.

The president of Finland meets Erdogan today in Turkey. In the Finnish media it's been already presented as a done deal for a couple of days that Erdogan will announce there the ratification of Finland's Nato bid. Hungary has reportedly said it's not going to be the last to ratify. I'm updating to 95% now.

I don't really understand why this is at 95%, and the same with this question for Sweden. The only issue is of course Turkey (and maybe Hungary), but I think there's more than 5% probability that Turkey keeps dragging this out for one more year or longer. There has been no clear movement in Turkey's position during the last 6 months. Another thing is that Sweden should be a couple of percentage points below Finland. It is possible that Turkey will ratify Finland first, because it has more problems with Sweden, on the Kurdish issue.

The Viasat attack has been mentioned (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/exclusive-hackers-who-crippled-viasat-modems-ukraine-are-still-active-company-2022-03-30/) here, but I think it could possibly even meet the criteria. According to the article it has maybe bricked more than 30,000 modems (because that number has already been replaced, or at least there are preparations for replacing). For instance, 10k modems of $100 in value would be 1M of damage. But I don't know if the modems where completely bricked, what is their value, and how many...

Putin says, it is "premature" to organize a summit with Biden, and convenes an sudden extraordinary meeting of his security council. I'm back up to 80%.