@Glossy This line of reasoning would be a lot more convincing if Russia hadn't already deployed troops and resources in a way that independent analysts believe would allow them to conduct a land invasion. The Iraq/WMD analogy makes little sense here.

Related question with resolution date in end of 2023 is currently at 21%.

The MSCI Russia index dropped about 3.5% in the last 30 minutes, likely in response to the US intel assessment.

UPDATE: Oil prices and the broader market also moved sharply up/down. Russia index had fallen 4.5% intraday since the report.

— edited by metani

My view is this should be higher given the unprecedented buildup and the possibility of Russia "resolving" the Ukraine issue. But one argument for it remaining close to 50/50 could be that the balance of uncertainty maximizes Putin's leverage as he supposedly tries to negotiate with the West. US, NATO and Ukraine haven't budged at all so far, but it's also obvious that they really don't want to fight a war. Not too many wars of this scale had been fought since WW2 and we shouldn't underestimate the chance of a peaceful settlement. Another good argumen...

Keep in the mind the NBER committee doesn't [call](https://www.barrons.com/articles/is-us-in-recession-nber-official-definition-51654630634) a recession based only on consecutive quarters of GDP decline. > The second most important criterion is the state of the labor market. Here, employment is traditionally the primary indicator. But other relevant measures of whether the labor market is tight or loose include the unemployment rate, the ratio of employment to population, and job vacancies. The labor market is still red hot by any measure and should ...

How does the World Bank convert nominal GDP to USD? Do they average the exchange rates throughout 2022 or just take the end of year value?

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Eric Kaufmann predicts in his new book that a higher proportion of the global population will be religious in the future than present due to divergence in birth rates between the religious/secular and the rich/poor. A good question might be to ask what percentage of the global/US population will identify with a religion, with resolution based on reputable polling.

In hindsight, the idea of allowing the views of any one of the 18 intelligence agencies to trigger positive resolution seems overly generous. I predicted as if the intelligence agencies would signal a singular point of view, even as there might be differences of opinion between them.

I'm particularly interested in this clause

all 109 events are completed in between these two events

How common were event cancellations in the past due to various non-pandemic related reasons (logistics, medical, sporting, etc)?

Here's a Washington Post [piece](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-did-covid-19-begin-its-initial-origin-story-is-shaky/2020/04/02/1475d488-7521-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html) about the laboratory origin theory. It ranks accidental release as the more likely scenario compared to synthetic biology. Any circumstantial evidence in favor of the synthetic theory, such as locations of various labs in Wuhan or similarity with known bat coronaviruses, probably applies to the accidental release theory. And laboratory [incidents](ht...

@JgaltIt doesn't strike me as likely that health organizations listed in description will publish assessment about whether Chinese government intentionally underreported. Isn't that more of an intelligence assessment (eg. by CIA/NSA)?

I last made a prediction back in March at 20% when the lab theory was considered a conspiracy theory. Having ignored the story until this week, I'm surprised by the amount of evidence - circumstantial and biological - that's been shared by credible scientists since (granted I'm just a normie who reads media articles, etc).

At this point, what's the strongest argument against lab release? Should we have hopes for the WHO mission?

How many past cyberattacks would meet the question's conditions? The Colonial Pipeline hack?

The Metaculus median curve is flattening!

Surprised [this](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/) hasn't been shared - profile of a Chinese virologist working at Wuhan Institute of Virology who looked into whether the novel virus was identical to any of the bat coronaviruses in her collection and concluded it wasn't. However we do have more evidence of the professional conversations around Wuhan being an unlikely origin of the virus. > Shi—a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues beca...

Is there a question about the expected vaccination rate in US and other countries?

Can the admin clarify whether the J&J vaccine should be incorporated in resolution? Reminder that the data [release](https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-announces-single-shot-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-met-primary-endpoints-in-interim-analysis-of-its-phase-3-ensemble-trial) states the vaccine was: ``` 72% Effective in the US and 66% Effective Overall at Preventing Moderate to Severe COVID-19, 28 Days after Vaccination ``` There's an important ambiguity about whether the US or global population figure should be used since resolution depends on...

What is the best argument based on geography that Wuhan is an unnatural place for bat coronavirus outbreak to emerge? AFAIK, bats are found nearly everywhere globally.

@juancambeiro1015 Is there a link to the NY serosurvey paper? Also, using excess deaths which implies an underestimation of death tally by ~25%, would bring IFR above 1%.

Prediction: 73%

A very small share (3 % of crude oil) of US energy imports comes from Russia and a large chunk of Russian energy trade is already gone due to companies/traders taking preemptive actions. The practical impact of direct sanction is diminishing while the symbolic/political impact remains.