@Jgalt Excepting any bizarre non-forecasting related strategies, the probability that any of the 1% predictions on this question are made with both sound rationale and understanding of overconfidence in forecasting might be plausibly close to 1%.

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@Glossy

He thinks Washington wanted to create a false flag operation in the Donbass, something bloody, in order to draw Russia into a war.

How is this a remotely rational move? It's so risky that 66% should be overconfident.

@mumpskin Increasing buildup points in at least two directions: a predetermined invasion or a serious bluff where your opponent predictably won't back down quickly or easily. If the evidence was this cut and dry forecasters wouldn't be having such a hard time.

Yes, but not in a way sufficient to resolve this question positively.

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Why so much weight on late Dec? Question resolves ambiguously if it doesn't fall.

Watching the speech, it looks like a simple eastern intervention would be a dream outcome for Ukraine at this point.

@qw2019 They're not really comparable. Iraq was extremely hostile to the US and eastern Ukraine is sympathetic to Russia. Iraq was around the world from the US and Ukraine is next door to Russia. Russia has big PPP advantage vs US and as has been mentioned has self-sufficient arms and energy industries and a powerful trading partner in China. I think an invasion is under 50% likely; they may be willing to invade if necessary but US will probably make (private) powerful concessions to prevent this.

@qumidium

Therefore, it is dangerous to shut it down because it will make many people jobless (or significantly reduce their income)

According to Russian youtuber NFKRZ it's already difficult or impossible to get paid (at least from youtube and places like patreon) due to the sanctions.

Surprising that the community median is so stable over the past few days:

  • Ongoing dirty bomb drama
  • Zelensky worries about getting nuked, wants assurance Moscow nuked if Kyiv is
  • 101st deployed to border
  • Chunk of Democrats break from the party and advocate peace negotiations--maybe just due to economic pressures for reelection

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Is this a serious prediction? Countries led by women are already known to go to war and if two such countries haven't yet fought each other it's only because there hasn't been enough opportunity due to the scarcity (so far) of female leaders. Also, women selected for positions of national leadership probably tend to have more in common with men who land those roles rather than women in general, so it might not be a good bet to suggest they'll be, for example, more conciliatory or less overconfident than heads of state in general. *— edited by ugandamax...
@(JonathanRay) There's virtually no chance NATO is willing to risk a fight with Russia over Ukraine (particularly over the Russian-sympathizing areas most likely to be occupied in the even of an invasion). First, the major risk to deterrence ratio is way too high--WWIII consideration gives Russia the advantage here not NATO. While letting Ukraine down is predictably not good for NATO long-run it is for now a much better option than a small but plausible chance of bringing WWIII. Second, sending troops has a good chance of backfiring and not only provokin...
@(notany) 10% is too low. Media coverage is not the only reason to suspect a possible invasion. >1. the question excludes Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. >2. Russia is a master of brinkmanship These are good points against positive resolution. >The easiest way for a Russian leader to get toppled is to lose a war. I'd suggest that Putin has more than enough power, insulation from pushback, media control, social authority and even popularity to survive even a war that goes quite badly. He also has no realistic opponents (no Navalny is not a realistic op...

Looks like their government is threatening to block youtube.

Apparently this is nominally related to two German-language RT channels being blocked.

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@BrunoYammine Really, this might be the other way around. Normally, there is no such thing as a surprise invasion because you need to move lots of stuff and this will be spotted.

In this case most of the "stuff" is already in place. If there is a decision to invade, dragging things out could actually be the best possible way to achieve as much surprise as possible. And the arms deliveries being publicized really are more of a drop in the bucket type deal; they're not a serious deterrent even if they go on for months.

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**Four possibly salient factors I haven't seen mentioned in the comments:** - [Essay 'On the historical unity of Russia and Ukraine'](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Об_историческом_единстве_русских_и_украинцев) Published officially by Russia during the summer. Title says enough. - Recent ASAT demonstration endangering the ISS: actual risk was low, but this is a great way to say "we can cause big problems without resorting to nukes, so you might think about not getting in our way [over Ukraine]." I'm surprised to see so little connection of this to Ukrain...

There are two major problem with the new design for those of us who like to browse large numbers of questions:

1) Density of questions is reduced, more scrolling needed to see equivalent number of questions.

2) Question titles broken up with data preview instead of simply listed one after the other, making question-to-question browsing less readable.

To solve this you can have an option to collapse the data previews and / or shift them to the right of the question text.

Why so many people on 1%? Any 1%ers want to share their rationale?

@BrunoParga Censoring information that might give predictive power should be against everything Metaculus stands for. As pointed out by others this is a braindead request for many reasons, and with respect to the contributions of users here nobody on Metaculus so far is even doing primary OSINT.

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How much does an invasion increase risk of accidental nuclear use? It has to be more than 1%.