I think this is likely, but I think there's a decent chance (10-20%) that a similar sentiment is expressed by naming 'The Ukrainian People' as the Persons of the Year, or something like it.

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I think this is more likely than the current community estimate (26%). Looking over the past few decades of the award, TIME has often gone for conceptual winners, e.g. 'The Computer' in 1982, 'The Endangered Earth' in 1988, 'You' in 2006. And they've never repeated a winner in immediately successive years, reducing the likelihood of Ukraine-based winners. The other thing pointing against Ukraine and towards AI is that TIME is normally trying to capture a zeitgeist and get coverage - repeating Ukraine wouldn't do that, but AI might. Of course, a lot ca...

@johnnycaffeine You might find this paper interesting - Dissolving the Fermi Paradox by Sandberg, Drexler and Ord (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf) - it argues that most Fermi calculations are done with point estimates, which can overstate likelihood. They try to judge reasonable uncertainty distributions for each parameter based on contemporary views, and find that it should not be surprising if Earth is the only planet with intelligent life in the universe.

@rappatoni As smart as cephalopods probably are, they are also not very social. Given that the evolution of human intelligence depended a lot on sociality, this answer would either need a path to intelligence that didn't depend on sociality, or asociality would be another barrier cephalopods would need to overcome.

Ukraine's recent successes surely push this higher, both for degree of support and salience in U.S. culture. It appears that Time names the person of the year in December, and we're now not that far from it - it's looking less likely that a more significant cultural moment will occur before then.

— edited by bengs

@kievalet Good points! I don't know how I managed to forget about the Queen! I think I'm struggling to disentangle who I think should win vs. who will win. I still think Zelenskyy is the leading candidate, but will decrease my credence thanks to your comment.

@kievalet Liverpool have won their penultimate game, so now it comes down to the simultaneous last round on Sunday. Liverpool are 1 point behind, so they'll need to win and Man City to lose or draw. The only way for Liverpool to draw and win the title is if City lose by 7 goals, which is very unlikely. Fun fact: City's last game is against Aston Villa, who are currently coached by Steven Gerrard, one of Liverpool's greatest ever players.

I think the likelihood of a lab origin is probably lower than 40%, and it seems even less likely that that two major public health bodies are both convinced enough (what evidence could arise to cement a lab-origin?) and consider it strategically sound to make such a claim by 2024.