Going through expiring predictions reminded me. Just as we did for 2010 and 2011, it's time for LessWrong to make its beliefs pay rent and give hostages to fortune in making predictions for events in 2012 and beyond.
Suggested topics include: Methods of Rationality updates (eg. "will there be any?"), economic benchmarks (price of gold has been an educational one for me this past year), medical advances (but be careful not to be too optimistic!), personal precommitments (signing up for cryonics?), being curmudgeonly about self-improvement, making daring predictions about the future of AGI, and so on.
As before, please be fairly specific. I intend to put most predictions on PredictionBook.com and it'd be nice if they weren't too hard to judge in the future.
(If you want advice on making good predictions, I've tried to write up a few useful heuristics I've learned. So far in the judging process, I've done pretty well this year, although I'm a little annoyed I got a Yemen prediction right but for the wrong reasons.)
(Reposting because parent was downvoted below default visibility. Original post here)
On February 13th, President Obama will be assassinated by ninjas. This will lead to a political crisis, which Sarah Palin will exploit to get elected to the White House. On August 18, in a public address to a worried nation, the Secretary of State will declare, 'Two nukes were not enough'. To prevent the destruction of the Holy Grail, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres and the Organisation will forge a temporary alliance with the intent of neutralizing America's nuclear arsenal. The plan will fail because of sabotage by SEELE. In desperation, Harry Potter will kill every member of the American administration using the Death Note. He will be summoned by the Wizengamot to answer charges of violating the Statute of Secrecy. Having discovered the SEELE plot, however, he will go to Antarctica and attempt to stop it instead of returning to Britain. The Wizengamot will then rule for the repossession of the assets of Potter Finance, and Lord Draco Malfoy will be unable to overrule them. This will trigger civil war in Magical Britain, which will eventually engulf the rest of Magical Europe.
Meanwhile, in Japan, the remnants of the Tohsaka and Matou clans, the late Kiritsugu Emiya's band, and the Church will forge an alliance to deal with the combined forces of the Chaos Legion and the Organisation. They will be defeated, but Ginevra Weasley and Neville Longbottom will be assassinated by Shirou Emiya and Rin Tohsaka respectively. The Organisation and the Legion will try to backstab each other simultaneously, which the Integrated Data Entity and the Sky Canopy Dominion will try to take advantage of. Yuki Nagato will attempt to betray the Entity and will be deleted from existence as a consequence. In retaliation, Kyon will use his trump card on Haruhi Suzumiya, whose annoyance with this whole long-winded FUBAR will create a timequake so severe that it will cause the Second and Third Impacts to occur simultaneously, wiping out all life on earth except for a timid boy and a narcissistic girl with mommy issues. This will happen on December 21.
.... Wow, so the Mayans were right?
Confidence: 99% (Thanks to katydee for the reminder.)
Discussion about a possible fic based on this bizarre mish-mash of universes may be found here
Oops!
(It's a little embarrassing to make a mistake for such a high confidence prediction! But I'm sure LW won't judge you too much. ;) )