@(exmateriae) I have also done it before and now think it is not necessarily bad practice, but simply bad forecasting. I think a major source of overconfidence is jumping into a question one knows little about at the (perceived) last moment. It corresponds to taking an extreme inside perspective based on usually a single piece of "decisive" evidence.
Well, things do go wrong "at the last minute" all the time. Some recent examples:
- [Russian troops in Kyiv in 2022](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9459/russian-troops-in-kiev-in-2022/) got ~200 addit...
@Sylvain I find this too censorious. The most difficult aspect of forecasting this (at least for me) is figuring out, how Russia assesses the situation, how it will react to it and how it aims to communicate it. Prorussian comments - trolling or not - can be a signal in this regard.
What was the insult btw? "GAE" or "Ukros" (is that pejorative)?
Instead of lobbying for ambiguous resolution, why don't we patiently wait out the still forthcoming media reports. Just the other day we learned that commandos attacked the presidential compound. If we get more information about the size of that force, that might resolve the question unambiguously.
There are many stories to be told in this war and people will write memoirs, etc. This information will come forth (if the event happened) even if it takes some time.
For the record, I feel like we as forecasters did a very bad job on this one. We got way ov...
I am updating downwards because the Azovstal siege has ended without the use of a chemical weapon. A use against the defenders in the catacombs of the steel plant was as "reasonable" a use case for this kind of weapon as it gets. So a major risk factor has been removed. 21% -> 15%
Updating upwards after Ukrainian forces took back the Gostomel airport. Unlikely now that the invasion will end very rapidly and Ukrainian army seems to be putting up a serious fight.
[This paper](https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publications/giga-focus/easier-in-than-out-the-protracted-process-of-ending-sanctions) is an excellent source for base rates on this.
Some key points:
1. Sanctions end fastest if they are successful, but less than half of all sanctions end with any degree of compliance by the target.
2. US sanctions last longest, one average 8 years; EU sanctions are lifted after 6 years on average.
3. Sanctions by different senders lifted were lifted in the same year in only about one third of the cases.
4. Almost half of t...
@CraigMichael What strategic advantage does it gain by controlling the Donbas region? I am pretty convinced they want to integrate all of Ukraine into Russia in the medium to long term. Just occupying Donbass would fix none of their problems with Ukraine (increasing military power, westernization/systemic rival, potential NATO membership).
Quick update and collection of "known outs" on this one:
- One or more justices change their minds (rare, but could obviously still happen).
- One or more justices "change their minds" (as in "is pressured to do so").
- One or more justices had already changed their minds previously to the leak of the draft (Consider for example a scenario where the draft was leaked to get them back in line; after the leak of the draft, any conservative justice not voting in favor of it would be seen as a traitor and possibly despised for the rest of his/her life by his...
A lot of commenters who assign a low probability to an invasion point out that it would be very detrimental to Russia in many ways. Western sanctions could hit the Russian economy badly; a bloody insurgency funded by the West could arise in the occupied Ukrainian territories; Europe would almost certainly try to become more independent of Russian gas faster; etc.
I agree but only in the short and medium term. I think there is a case to be made for a long term (the one in which we are all dead kind) benefit of expanding Russia's borders westwards. And I...
I agree that this is likely now (I am at 80%), but 95% seems unreasonably high to me. No official statement has been made so far, the most important actor right now (PM) has not announced her intentions which we can only infer from media reports (which are probably less than 95% reliable); she can still change her mind at low political cost. And that is just one possible "out". There are still many things that can go wrong here.
@(casens) can someone explain to me how this would be militarily advantageous for Russia (honest question, I don't understand it, but I am no military expert so maybe I am missing something)? If they want to open a new front, why would they want to invade Moldova for that? They would have to divert troops to defeat the Moldovan military and then maintain an occupation force. That would weaken their second front with Ukraine which already relies on a questionable force (their 3000 guys plus the Transnistrian army).
Moldova is landlocked so has no port or...
I would like to point everyone to [this paper's](https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-6765.12065) (the link is to the open access working paper, published version [here](https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-6765.12065); I have not done a deeper literature review or an analysis of the paper's methodology) findings:
>"If comprehensive sanctions – which affect the economy and/or the population as a whole – are imposed on regimes
with compelling legitimation strategies, they regularly trigger unintended ral...
@(ad42astra) In general, I find it interesting that people here seem to update a lot on public announcements by the various parties compared to their verifiable actions. Talk is cheap, actions are expensive. I felt people were over-updating on the American intelligence announcements as well.
Meanwhile in terms of actions: the withdrawals have yet to be verified and would change little on the ground, as these are the units stationed closest to the Ukrainian border anyway. In other news the German gas reserves reached a historic low yesterday, at least i...
["Der Spiegel" reports that the ministry of economics is internally preparing legislation to extend the operation of nuclear plants into 2023](https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/habeck-atomkraftwerke-101.html).
According to the reporting, the ongoing grid stress test has been adapted to not only evaluate grid stability but also electricity prices. This change makes it likely that the result will be in favor of extending nuclear.
Further, the ministry has inquired at the utilities how long nuclear fuel would last at the three power plants. Re...
@(oracleofferentari) While this is not really relevant to the resolution of the question, I do think you (and others here) take the success of a Russian invasion too much for granted. Historically, invasions - even with overwhelming force - sometimes fail militarily (I don't have a base rate, but some modern examples would be the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Italian invasion of Greece the Soviet invasion of Finland, and, arguably, the Korean war). An invasion of this scale against a military of this strength has not been attempted in a long time (th...
Source is in Russian, I am relying on Chrome translation.
With the repairs completed and the bridge remaining open throughout the process, the main remaining out is another Ukrainian attack on the bridge.
[Süddeutsche Zeitung reports](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-atomkraftwerk-isar-2-laufzeitverlaengerung-gas-krise-1.5625375) that a large majority of the Munich city council is in favor of extending the operation of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant until "approximately mid-2023".
The city of Munich holds a 25% stake in the power plant via its communal utility Stadtwerke München (SWM). Munich Mayor and head of the SWM supersivory board, Dieter Reiter (SPD) stated that he "will approach the federal government and request them to create the l...
@(rappatoni) Based on these news I am updating to 73%.
Here is why: the remaining major counterargument to an extension beyond 2022 has been that nuclear would not help with the heating problem Germany will face come winter. The Greens in particular touted an [expertise by think tank Brainpool Energy](https://green-planet-energy.de/fileadmin/images/presse/220706_GPE_Fact-Sheet-Gaseinsparung-durch_KKWVerl%C3%A4ngerung_EnergyBrainpool.pdf) according to which nuclear would only be able to reduce the German natural gas need by about 1% and therefore cannot ...