The most important piece of information pointing towards the possibility of containment that people are probably not talking enough about is that the outbreak in South Korea seems to have slowed significantly. The last 5 days had case growth rates of 14%, 11%, 8%, 9% and 5%, respectively. I believe that unlike Japan, they have been testing extremely rigorously. (> 130,000 tested) It might be that the natural growth rate is lower than what we have seen previously, though, as the system was 'catching up' with reporting. I personally am still really confu...

@Nostradamnus @KnowName Let me respond to your criticism by explaining my motives for creating this question. Firstly, if this question does indeed harm Metaculus' credibility in any way you have my sincere apologies for having caused this. I created this question because I was sceptical of the estimates given by experts, as 'experts' (as if one could actually be an expert on an event that has never occurred in human history) are by definition those who are very interested in the topic and by the nature of their interest probably assign a non-negligibl...

As tragic as this may seem, given that we are now at 90% for this one, a question with a higher target (e.g., 150K) may be helpful.

I think they are really in a position where they cannot move the clock any closer to midnight, as they have already moved so close. 2 minutes to midnight is as close as they have ever been, with many years in the more dangerous phases of the Cold War being further off. Should they move closer to midnight than at any time in the Cold War, they are likely to be condemned as alarmist and lose a lot of credibility.

Potential counterexample: during the last bit of the Seven Years' War (1762-1763) Austria (under Maria Theresa) and Russia (under Catherine the Great) were on opposing sides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War

I'm not sure this counts, though, as the war started prior to Catherine the Great coming to power and Austria and Russia were originally on the same side. Maybe someone can come up with a better example.

@jzima Also, if civil wars count then the War of the Castilian Succession is a pretty clean counterexample.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Cast…

I do believe he is the visitation of the Abrahamic God on Earth, though. But who has ever heard of God going to Mars?

@AngraMainyu Actually positive resolution is possible prior to 2100, as we may reach a hundred 120-year-olds earlier. Given that the 99th oldest living person (we already have Calment) was born on the 3rd June 1907, the earliest possible date for a positive resolution is 3rd June 2027.

@JuliusSessler You might be right, but a 'solid chance' is not 99%, right?

We've had a full 1 ˚C decrease in the community prediction between December 2019 and May 2022. Anybody have an idea what caused that? Has any new information become available?

@r.grannell2 Percentile ranking would be great. Thinking about it I realised it would also be great to have a ranking of predictors by average number of points won on question for all players with >20 resolved questions.

The World Poverty Clock (https://worldpoverty.io/headline/) now supposedly has included the effects of COVID-19 in their projections and now project 583 million people left in extreme poverty in 2030. Given a more than 200 million margin for error my natural prediction would be 10%-15%, but I'm updating upwards to 20% based on the community.

This question should have a quite high correlation to the general 'will singularity happen' question ...

@aixi Of course you are correct here. However, I addressed this point in the final paragraph of my question and hope everyone predicts in good faith.

@traviswfisher You're right! I just noticed that Rockefeller's $1 billion in 1913 would only be worth about $25 billion today (not $400 billion), according to this <a href='http://www.usinflationcalculator.com'>inflation calculator</a>. I don't know why I didn't pick up on this when writing the question - guess I'm not particularly good at judging inflation over long time spans. The Wikipedia article also states that Rockefeller's billion dollar net worth was equivalent to about 2% of US GDP back then; given that $400 billion is about 2% of US GDP <st...

We're currently at about 40% here. I'm wondering how much of the remaining 60% involves China invading and losing the war before it hits 50% control. (Assuming that short term control would lead to positive resolution.)

Death count now at 402. Guess we can resolve negative.

Interesting fact:According to Wikipedia Carlos Slim has a net worth equivalent to about 6% of Mexico's GDP.

This is probably not super relevant to the question, except as a demonstration that a single person having a net worth of greater than 2% of their country's GDP is feasible.

@tenthkrige

I didn't intend this question to be conditional. If there are no humans in 2100 and no conditions have been met, it should resolve negative.

However, I personally am very confident that there will be humans in 2100.

99% ambiguous:

The only way that this does not resolve ambiguous is (in my opinion) an intelligence explosion based on a recursively self-improving super intelligence. In this case it is unlikely that there will be a 4 year period before the 1 year period.