Just wanted to throw a question out there for the community. Now that we’re seeing the whole world have hindsight bias and laugh at Joe Biden‘s prediction on July 6, I was just wondering, who here thought it was obvious in advance that the Taliban would win this quickly? I will admit that I got it wrong. I thought they would win but I didn’t know it would be nearly this quickly. I go through and look at the early predictions from here and GJOpen. I am not seeing anybody who thought it was obvious in advance. In mid July, GJO had it at 2% that the US E...

@(Wackus) The question is fine. I noticed you’re new here and so you may not realize that on the eve of the invasion five of those six cities had questions about whether Russian troops would enter. Also important is the fact that the question was created right after Russia invaded, so it was not known how things would unfold. I also should point out that as someone who has actually created questions here, I know firsthand that it’s difficult to get the wording right. Hopefully if you ever decide to create a question here yourself and not just be a crit...

I am at 7% on this city, which has been bypassed and is in a shelling/stalemate situation as Russians focus elsewhere. There are only 70 days until June 1st. I'll post some of my reasoning, so feel free to disagree. First of all it is very hard to surround a massive city like this. Google Maps has a distance feature, and you can see for yourself that cutting off communication would require making an airtight perimeter of over 80 km (50 miles), and the Russians aren't even close to having achieved that very first step. Secondly I want to discuss someth...

Once someone has achieved a certain "power and insights" level, allow them to gain 1 tachyon each time they post their prediction as a comment? I notice how valuable it is when I see someone do that, and offering that incentive could be a way to encourage it.

With community odds now at 38%, I think I may go ahead and create a question about whether Russian troops enter Kiev by the end of the year. If we think the invasion has a significant chance of happening, a question like that would be important it would be useful to then see what kind of incursion it would be.

@(BrunoYammine) My contrary view is that it's 65%, actually now 70%, because it's become a self-reinforcing cycle. This is happening for the following reasons: 1) Because this has become a popular question 2) Everyone is a news junkie reading the same stuff pumped out by the mainstream Western media 3) There's become a Twitter competition to post every purported satellite image and video of the invasion Totally About To Happen. 4) People see that most everyone else else is predicting invasion, so now due to the popularity of this question, we get gr...

@(Jgalt) The filing is [here](https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zdvxogenypx/050622%20--%20Del%20Ch%20--%20Orlando%20Police%20Pension%20Fund%20v%20Twitter%20Inc%20et%20al%20complaint.pdf). Skimmed through it, looks to me like it's just lawyers getting paid, same as with any of these zillion other shareholder lawsuits that get filed whenever there's any sort of corporate action. A few things that jump out at me: 1) They consider Morgan Stanley to be affiliated with Elon, due to an investment fund holding Tesla shares, among other things. L...

@(jowo) This would be a good question to investigate. You can do a Google search using custom range for date. When did the Russian build up begin? When did the "shouting" begin? I don't have much time myself for a proper study at the moment, but doing a quick search I found the latest round of build up started being reported in March: https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+troop+buildup+ukraine+before%3A2021-03-31 Stories about a possible Russian invasion came after that: https://www.google.com/search?q=russia+invade+ukraine+before%3A2021-04-30 Not r...

We have our first data point, and Bing's market share was 2.81% for February 2023, down from 3.03% for January. As Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger put it in 2009, "Google has a huge new moat. In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat." For those unfamiliar, the word "moat" refers to how difficult it is for new market entrants to come in and compete with the incumbent. At the time Munger spoke those words, Google's market share on Statcounter pages was 89.86%. Today it's 93.37%.

@(JasonMaguire) I have been studying the question like crazy of, "Where/what would Russia attack with TNWs?" In the Vietnam War, the US famously had trouble destroying the Thanh Hoa Bridge in North Vietnam: [Attempts To Destroy The Thanh Hoa Bridge](https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/1965_stemming_the_tide/Attempts-To-Destroy-The-Thanh-Hoa-Bridge/). There were high-level discussions in the 1960s of using TNW to destroy that bridge. The US was not able to finally destroy it until the development of precision-guided munitions in the early 1970s. In Ukraine, th...

@QI92756340QI If we're talking about the swastika-waving nutters, there was a town in North Dakota with a population of a couple dozen that some white nationalists attempted to move to and take over, but that failed miserably due to these people being unable to conduct themselves with any sort of proper behavior. (Google Leith, ND, if you want to read all about it.)

And that's just one small town, let alone entire parts of the US. My money would be on it not happening anywhere for the foreseeable future.

The crowd odds here are 95%. I'm curious about this discrepancy vs. the stock market. The stock price for TWTR just hit $49.00. This means an annualized return of around 30% if the deal goes closes in a few months, just from buying the common stock. I am curious who is right, us or the stock market.

[AP: Looking for evidence? Trust us, Biden administration says](https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-russia-ukraine-health-europe-national-security-5c4182d83dd8b7585ac49fdbb5f91c45) > WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Biden’s administration was asked for evidence to back up dramatic claims about national security developments this past week, it demurred with a simple rejoinder: You’ll have to trust us on that. >No, they would not reveal what led them to say they knew that Russia was plotting a false flag operation as a pretext to invade Ukrai...

Is there a way to view the old version? I got so used to it and can't make heads or tails of this new one

I believe we have enough now for a resolution. This BBC map shows Russian front lines within the city limits of Mariupol: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60695465

Does anyone disagree, or should we go ahead and call in the admins for a resolution?

"Chief Twit"

I'd love to see a discussion going. So I'll start the bidding at 90%, for the following reasons: 1) The base rate. Of the 44 individuals who have preceded Biden as POTUS, 86% ran for reelection. 2) Actuarial tables. Biden has [plenty of life expectancy](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html) remaining, and unlike the average 78 year-old American man, he has access to his own suite at Walter Reed, along with a dedicated team of doctors. 3) By all accounts, his managerial style is a delegator who sketches broad strokes and is content to sit back...

Just want to note a key point, mentioned at GJOpen, is the torch relay. When the torch relay reaches its final destination, the Games officially begin. (PDF source)

The torch relay official schedule is at the following page and is scheduled to commence on March 25, from Fukushima prefecture: https://tokyo2020.org/en/torch/

Everyone seems to be assuming that polls are wrong (myself included), and we assume that of course the error will be in favor of Republicans beating the polls. However, I am wondering whether we are underestimating the impact of the vote this year from voters under 30, especially women under 30. If our demographics here on Metaculus (and the demographics of PredictIt's users) are similar to those reported by the Good Judgment project ([here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221720306007#tbl0001) for example), most of us here are not...

Does anyone know anybody in Ukraine? If so, can you please get them to tell you what the soil is like outside their house? It it muddy, or is it frozen?

Context: https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-invas…

— edited by johnnycaffeine