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New Year's Prediction Thread (2012)
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.)
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Comments (339)
kiba starts us off with two Bitcoin predictions:
Of all the things to have a prediction market on the future value of something traded on a market seems among the least useful. If my prediction regarding the above was positive then I would bet by buying a lot of bitcoins (which are currently priced below the lower bound).
Indeed. In kiba's case, he's holding onto around 1000 or so bitcoins and doesn't have any cash to spare for buying more. (Personally, I think he's dangerously undiversified and should - at the very least - have sell orders in at 5 or 10 bucks.)
Er, you know what options are, right?
Roughly speaking... part of the point.
Bitcoins will diminish in popularity %70
Bitcoins will be accepted by at least one major online trader of legal goods 5%
Ok.
Coverage in media will decrease 90% (the novelty value has worn off, so unless something major happens theres little reason to discuss them). - The daily average of trades involving private individuals will be lower in 2012 then it was in 2011. 70%
Originally I was thinking of something like "one a non-bitcoin enthusiast would probably have heard of." But for something more quantifiable lets say (top 100 retailers by online sales.)[http://www.internetretailer.com/top500/list/]. 1%. Top 500 5%.
I am deeply interested in predictions regarding the progress of the charter city projects in Honduras, though I can't make any meaningful predictions on the topic myself.
If I were interested in the topic, I'd be making predictions on population size, gross domestic product, crime rates, and changes in legal jurisdiction - since all of them seem like they'd vary considerably if the charter city is successful or a failure.
These are already on PredictionBook:
Eliezer Yudkowsky will follow Kevin’s diet for at least three months in the next two years. PB link, link to diet.
If Eliezer Yudkowsky decides to follow Kevin’s diet for at least three months in the next two years, his end weight after three months will be at least ten pounds (~4.5 kg) lighter than his starting weight. PB link.
Obama will win in November 2012.
P=~.9 (that is ninety percent!)
90%? I think you need to read some Nate Silver. (Also, existing prediction.)
Thank you for the link to Silver's piece. I followed 538 in 2008 but I had not looked at it in awhile. Obviously .9 is far too high.
Upvoted for updating.
I want to make a bet at those odds. Mostly based on gwern's reply.
Intrade gives him barely above 50% chance, so you can make some money fast if you really believe your prediction.
And it's correct.
The Super Bowl will not be Packers over Patriots in February 2012.
P=~.8 (80%)
A trustworhy friend has told me that there are two HPMOR chapters in the pipeline-- I could check the website, which is where he says he got the information, but what would be the fun in that?
There will be a US election. People will say they're sick of politics. One of the candidates will win.
I expect there will be 2 winners in the 2012 national US election with p>.99. :P
This stranger on the internet confirms it! From the sounds of it the chapters are going to be long.
Some 2012-specific stuff. It's all a bit fluff-y, but unfortunately in all the high-status areas I either won't do better than the base rate or have just made it past Mount Stupid and really don't feel like making predictions just yet. I'm hoping for others to post way-too-confident comments I can make cynical predictions about. Anyway:
I still predict that Luke won't finish his metaethics sequence in 2012, especially now that the scope has widened.
The fifth book of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series actually came out (contrary to expectations) and GRRM is still alive, so I'm reasonably confident he won't die in 2012 either. I'm a little less sure if the TV show will actually cover all the books, but still somewhat optimistic.
Half-Life 3 won't come out. Not sure what will happen to EP3, but seems more likely than not it won't get released either. Still thinking.
Reddit: I'm less confident now we'll get an epic "told you so!" conclusion to the birth certificate threads after the whole birdie/cheese disaster. My trust in Reddit's ability to deliver in 2012 is way down.
And of course: the world doesn't end on 12/21, probably, but I'm still giving it a 1% shot. I'm not sure if my sanity's slipping again, but "we are in a supervised simulation" still seems not too implausible (say, 0.01% <= p <= 20%).
I'm also practicing my "that was a totally lame twist and I called it ages ago" skills. (Obviously spoilers behind links, but not in this comment.)
I've done fairly well with Dexter's 6th season (three notable predictions) and have added some about season 7, but as I intentionally only follow the series itself, most serious predictions will have to wait for the first episode (except for the important one).
(Unfortunately I don't watch any "lame twist" shows besides Dexter right now, but I'm checking if I missed some.)
What are the odds of this being judged wrong?
"I'm also practicing my "that was a totally lame twist and I called it ages ago" skills. (Obviously spoilers behind links, but not in this comment.)"
be careful with this one, people won't watch anything with me.
So given that we're in a supervised simulation, the world ends on December 21st with p>1/20 ?
Yes. It's a sufficiently weird feature of the kind of simulation I would join. An apocalypse seems fitting, and 12/21 is the most prominent date we had since Y2K, but it's more surreal and a nice numerological coincidence, so more likely. (See Theory of Narrative Causation.)
I'll state here, for the record, that at some point in the future (post-singularity?) I intent to implement Sburb, grab some friends, suppress their memories (and mine) and make a proper game of it. I made this decision back in 2011, when I first ran into Homestuck.
It is in the nature of my personality that I would probably be unable to resist using 2012 for the start date, not least since I have a bunch of nieces and nephews at the appropriate age to be players right now. :P
I have no idea how to assign a probability to this currently being the case, though. ^^;
gwern, a nitpick on "So I applied this heuristic: what does the existence of an 130 year-old in 2025 imply about people in 2011? Well, if someone is 130 in 2025, then that implies that are now 116 years old (130-(2025-2011)). Then I looked up the oldest person in the world: Besse Cooper, aged 115 years old."
It's quite plausible that records will turn up within the next 13 years to show that someone is 116 years old now.
Is it? Could you name some previous instances where records turned up in the past few decades for a supercentenarian where the new claim was accepted and didn't look like a scam?
Fair enough. I haven't heard of any cases-- I was just going on a hypothesis that records tend to be incomplete, and more so further back.On the other hand, incomplete records means that proof that a record is solidly attached to a person is also hard to come by.
And further, the older you are, the more likely you are to be noted for being old. There are multiple studies and institutions dedicated to studying centenarians, and the more time passes, the less likely they will to have missed a genuine candidate. So at this point, you should expect that anyone claiming to be 116 to be fraudulent, or unverifiable at best (especially given the well-known tendency of humans to make up their age or lose a year - one interesting bit in Farewell to Alms was a short discussion of how historians estimate literacy in the deep past by statistically checking how many cemeteries or other memorials claim someone died at a suspiciously round age, and the more statistical irregularity, the less literacy and good record-keeping).
The U.S. Presidential candidate who spends the most money on his campaign will be elected.
Why is this downvoted? Too obvious?
Hard to judge, thanks to the Citizens case, and I can't help but wonder if it's near tautology - the more popular candidate wins, and also raises the most.
It's not a tautology because they are not logically equivalent (heh), but a spurious correlation, yes.
I was going to assign this prediction 50%, then I remembered the effect gwern mentioned here.
Most of the predictions in this thread will turn out to have been overconfident
The above prediction will turn out to have been overconfident.
All three predictions in this post will turn out to have been overconfident.
:p
This is tough to score objectively because not all the predictions in this thread assign a numerical probability to the prediction statement.
Also, because of that whole P(¬X) = 1 - P(X) thing, any deviation from perfect calibration (whether under or overconfidence) is necessarily overconfidence (if not of that particular proposition, then the negation of that proposition).
Hahahaha, nice word choice.
Is that supposed to be a joke? I don't get it.
Wracking my brains over some humorous interpretation, all I can get is maybe 'P(X)' is supposed to sound like 'penis'?
I'm guessing its because usually when people using the phrase "that whole x thing", x is a very simple term (usually one word), not an equation or one of the axioms of probability. Think, "that whole job thing" or "that whole guy thing".
Which explains why I didn't find it funny: I've used “whole [half a dozen words] thing” myself.
There are ways of measuring overconfidence. People make declarations in a positive sense with a probability greater than 50%. They are overconfident in the sense that when framed that way, they assign too high a probability to the more likely outcome. This is also testable by a variety of metrics. For example, you could do a calculation where one assumes that there's a betting market and everyone here has made a $1 even bet with their confidence as given in this thread. Then, if they are overconfident in the above sense, one expects that the total result over all bets will be a loss.
Right, I'm not denying that overconfidence bias exists and is a coherent concept. I was trying to point out that when we reinterpret the predictions to be more easily verified/falsified (like I have been doing before adding some of the predictions to PredictionBook) the prediction is transformed in a way that doesn't necessarily preserve the original framing (whether positive or negative), so it would be unclear from the proposition we would be scoring whether or not the original predictor was under or overconfident.
Right; in fact, we can see pretty easily that just transferring the predictor's probability to our better more precise predictions will intrinsically increase their apparent confidence. The point of our versions is to be narrower and better defined, and so we will judge our prediction correct in fewer states of the world than they would have judged their own prediction (independent of any biases); fewer states of the world means less confidence is justified (P(A&B) <= P(A)).
Of course, in practice, due to the many biases and lack of experience afflicting them, people are usually horribly overconfident and we can see many examples of that in this thread and the past threads. So between the two, we can be pretty sure that predictors are overconfident.
Trying to work out if there are any falsification conditions for the above...
Do you need to have an actual probability? Do you have to bet anything to post predictions? Do you have to be on PredictionBook.com?
Because this seems cool, but I'm not sure...?
Dunno if there are particular rules for this thread, but in general we encourage predictions to have confidence intervals associated with them. No bets needed, PredictionBook.com account not required.
So... how did I do for my 2011 predictions?
Apparently correct.
Apparently incorrect. It wasn't much higher, but it was still higher.
Wrong. To my surprise, the book did indeed come out.
As expected, no AGI.
As expected, the world is still here.
Wrong again here; she died in January.
As expected, no proof.
As expected, no qualification.
As expected, no job.
Ron Paul runs as an Independent or third party. 20% Obama reelected. 60% IF Obama reelected, white male goes on a shooting spree citing political climate as motivation. (Ignore this prediction if Obama not reelected.) 10% The men's rights movement is mentioned in a Time or Newsweek article. 5% Dark Knight Rises gets 50-85% on Rotten Tomatoes. (Good, but not as good as Dark Knight) 60% New Michael Jackson song released posthumously. 20% Chris Brown arrested on new domestic violence charges. 20%
If Obama is re-elected, then a white male will go on a “shooting spree” and the shooter will mention the “political climate” as a motivating factor. If the antecedent proposition is false, then this prediction will be withdrawn.
The mens’ rights movement will be mentioned by name in a Time or Newsweek article sometime during 2012.
Dark Knight Rises will be released in 2012 and will obtain Rotten Tomotoes score of at equal to or greater than 50% and equal or less than 85%.
A previously unreleased song by Michael Jackson will be released sometime before 2013.
Chris Brown will be arrested for assault, domestic violence, or criminal damage before 2013.
Any complaints with my interpretation of your prediction statements?
Looks great, thanks for figuring out the formatting.
The ones I didn't add were already on PredictionBook or had a close substitute that was.
ISTM that a shooter mentioning the political climate is significantly more likely than the shooter "mentioning the 'political climate' ". I think that quote marks mean exact quotes there.
Romney will be the Republican presidential nominee: 80%.
Obama will win reelection: 90%.with a non-Romney presidential nominee, 50% against Romney
The Occupy Wall Street protests will fade away over the next year so much that I no longer hear much about them, even in my little liberal hippie news bubble: 75%
There will be massive fanboy backlash against The Hobbit: 80%. Despite this, the Hobbit will be a pretty good movie (above 75% on Rotten Tomatoes): 70%
John Carter will be a pretty good movie (above 75% on Rotten Tomatoes). 85% Whether or not it is a good movie, I will love it. 95%
I will get my first death or rape threat this year: 80% My reaction to the death or rape threat will be elation that I've finally made it in feminist blogging: 95% Even if it isn't I will totally say it is in order to seem cooler: 99%
My comod and I will complete the NSWATM spinoff book this year: 75% It will be published as an ebook: 80% It will not make the transition to dead-tree-book this year: 90% It will make the transition to dead-tree-book eventually: 60%
I will break up with my girlfriend at some point over the next year: 60%.
I will acquire a new partner at some point over the next year: 90%.
I sincerely hope your girlfriend does not read this site, or at least doesn't know your username.
Well, you see, that 60% already factors in that possibility.
Are you assuming that ozy's girlfriend is unaware of this prediction? If so, why?
My girlfriend knows and is highly amused at my pessimism.
My logic is that I have never actually had a relationship that went much beyond the six-month mark, and while there are all kinds of factors that mean that this one is different and will stand the test of time, all of my other relationships also had all kinds of factors that meant this one is different and will stand the test of time.
The prediction is only 60%, however, since I might have actually gotten better at relationships since the last go-round. And because my girlfriend is really fucking awesome. :)
Can you get her prediction? Then possibly revise the prediction in light of new information from an informed party.
You may be interested in this http://lesswrong.com/lw/jx/we_change_our_minds_less_often_than_we_think .
I don't believe that that quite applies to my situation. I'm not predicting whether I'll choose right now to break up with my girlfriend (99.999% certainty I won't); I'm predicting whether at some point in the next year one of the future Ozymandiases, subtly different from me, will find zirself in a state in which zie wants to break up with zir girlfriend. I have already made up my mind to not break up; I'm predicting how likely I am to change my mind.
So, with a 60% chance of girlfriend breakup and a 90% chance of new partner acquisition, does this mean a 36% chance of a polyamorous, open, "cheating" or otherwise non-monogamous relationship situation for you at some point over the next year?
Edited to add: actually somewhat higher than 36%, since multiple new partners are possible along with a girlfriend breakup.
I'm already polyamorous, so there is in fact a certainty of a polyamorous relationship situation at some point in 2012. :)
Ah, I should have taken that possibility into account. Thank you.
You haven't gotten one yet?
I once had a totally non-political blog with less than 1000 views per month, and I still got a few.
No death or rape threats. I have yet to come up with a theory about why (beyond "crazy random happenstance" and "I'm so nice no one wants to rape and murder me"); suggestions appreciated.
The sort of people who make rape threats on feminist websites wouldn't rape or don't believe it is possible to rape someone with a masculine sounding screen-name.
...or don't find it emotionally satisfying to threaten to rape them.
Not too far off my own estimate, but... = 42% chance of a Republican president in 2013.
...seems overconfident. Counterprediction: OWS comes roaring back in some form|GOP presidency : 85%
Assuming only, say 20% chance of OWS maintaining itself in some form under a Democrat, that still gives (0.85x0.42 + 0.2x0.58) = 0.515 of continued OWS activity. Rounding down to correct for the likelihood of overconfidence at some intermediate step, I'll say Chance of OWS fading away: 50%
It is true, I forgot to account for the effects of a GOP presidency on OWS. However, I still think there's a high chance of a OWS fadeaway for a few reasons. One, the liberal hippies (generally the backbone of social justice movements) have started to nitpick OWS in earnest: this could be a sign either that OWS is getting more successful (and the crab in a bucket mentality is taking over) or that it's losing their support, but given that the mainstream media seems to have decided OWS is yesterday's news, I think it might be the latter. Second, as the economy splutters into recovery, OWS will get less support. Third, if OWS continues to get more popular, the government will likely make some token effort to address their concerns that will take away some of the momentum of the movement.
Nevertheless, you did mention an important factor I overlooked, so I'll downgrade it to a roughly 60% probability.
Intrade says:
So in these you are in agreement with everybody else.
I predict you're wrong on Hobbit backlash, but I don't even see how to define "backlash". Are we talking Matrix 2 backlash or Episode 1 backlash?
I was thinking roughly Matrix 2 level backlash: a significant group of "ruined FOREVER" fans, but the movie does not become a byword for terribleness now and forever like Episode 1. Possibly this could be measured by the number of negative YMMV tropes on its TVTropes page?
Fan backlash is remarkably difficult to operationalize.
Don't think that'd work; TV Tropes isn't very representative of fandom as a whole, and in any case popular works will attract more negative tropes than obscure ones simply as a function of having more eyes on the page and more fingers on keyboards. On the other hand, if the page gets locked for bickering, that's probably a good (if binary) indicator of backlash.
If you asked me to come up with a more general metric of fannish approval, I might look at ratios of fanworks to mainstream sales; that's pretty hard in itself, though, since different fandoms congregate in different places. You'll find a lot more Naruto fanart on DeviantArt than Sherlock Holmes.
My opinion is that a lot of the OWS folks are conferring and planning during the winter, and will continue to protest but will be doing something other than occupying public or semi-public spaces. I don't know how to frame this as a testable prediction.
By the end of the decade, it will be clear that North Korea never had nuclear weapons under Kim Jong Il.
40%
Recorded.
What do you mean with "clear"? Majority opinion among defense experts? Something stronger?
Majority opinion among defense experts would suffice, though I was picturing a more tumultuous scenario where the information leaks or just otherwise becomes widely known, via defection or invasion or collapse or revolution, etc.
This prediction could be made less ambiguous by specifying whether you mean that North Korea never successfully built a nuclear weapon but was sincerely trying to do so or you mean that they were never seriously attempting to build one in the first place.
I meant either of those scenarios.
Given you are not necessarily dealing with hugely rational individuals 'sincerely trying to' is hard to prove. If I give someone $1 to buy me a car am I sincerely trying to obtain one?
What do you mean by "nuclear weapons"? It's clear they had some sort of nuclear material in some sort of bomb.
Added some predictions:
1) 75%: On Jan 1, 2013, there will be 3 or fewer movies from 2011 on imdb’s top 250. (down from current 6) http://www.imdb.com/chart/top (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5059)
2) 50%: On Jan 1, 2013, there will be seven or more movies from 2012 on imdb’s top 250. http://www.imdb.com/chart/top (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5060)
3) 85%: The Shawshank Redemption will be #1 on imdb’s top 250 on Jan 1, 2013. (it is currently #1) http://www.imdb.com/chart/top (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5061)
4) 60%: 12 Angry Men will be #5 or higher on imdb’s top 250 on Jan 1, 2013. (it is currently #6) http://www.imdb.com/chart/top (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5062)
5) 10%: By Jan 1, 2013, there will be a way to directly input your estimated probability distribution across a range of different possible quantities when making a prediction on PB. (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5063)
6) 50%: At least three papers with the word “connectomics” in their title or abstract will be published in Nature in 2012. (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5064)
Number 5 is my somewhat lame attempt at a feature request. What I mean is that, for example, on #6, I'd like to be able to say, that I assign, say, a 15% chance to there being 0 such papers, a 15% chance of 1, a 20% chance of 2, and so on. Of course, I could make multiple predictions, but this is tedious. It'd be really nice to be able to assign probabilities to a full range of quantities on one question. (And I expect it would make my predictions more accurate, too.) Each individual probability assignment would have to be judged "correct" or "incorrect" independently.
60% seems way too high to me. The number of votes on 12 Angry Men and Pulp Fiction are both very high- for one to move up and the other to move down seems like it would require a large number of votes distributed differently from past votes.
12 Angry Men has continued to rise every year and I just don't see it ending. Pulp Fiction is very violent and I expect the zeitgeist of film watching (and rating) to move farther and farther away from that. Finally, the movies on the top 250 are shrinkage estimated, scaled to the number of votes, and I expect the ratio of votes between 12AM and PF to decrease in the next year. Anyway, we'll see!
imdb voting always had a strong bias towards old movies, but this is getting ridiculous.
These were decent movies, but not even remotely close to top 10. I don't see how they'd even manage to legitimately get into top 100.
This might be the source of the problem: "For this top 250, only votes from regular voters are considered". My suspicion is that their "regular voter" filter is broken and causes this problem.
If you're so sure, then what would your top 10 be?
They famously don't say what the filter is, to prevent gaming. If it is broken now it must have been broken for a long time, because I don't remember any major single-day jumps of late, except for times when they altered the "m" parameter.
I have no issues with the following movies from the top list (there are some big omissions but they're all awesome movies):
Schindler's List loses at least one star for its ending alone.
City of God is the only movie there I don't remember watching, so I cannot say much either way. Godfather I've watched so long ago, I won't be saying anything about it now.
Movies really get a lot better as time goes. Old movies near the top are simply not that good.
IMDB's treatment of single multipart movies like Lord of the Rings and especially Kill Bill as multiple separate movies annoys me a lot, but that's an entirely different story.
Broken as in drastically unrepresentative, not as in gameable.
EDIT: Here's my theory.
I predict that the youtube music video with the most views of 2012 will either be:
1) A Farsi reggae version of "Good King Wenceslas", by an Iranian who has publicly wished for the death of Barack Obama or;
2) A pudgy middle-aged guy singing about some district of Seol that no non-Koreans have ever heard about. In Korean. Also, he will have publicly expressed the wish that the family members of American servicemembers will die.
And the president will watch this performance and applaud.
ALSO I predict that at least one American presidential candidate will publicly take a stance against a major character from Sesame Street.
ALSO I predict that the Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain will be seen parachuting into London, or at least her stunt double will do so with her apparent consent, if not pleasure.
Most fearsome of all: I predict (rot13 for the faint of heart)
Guvf pbzzrag vf n cynprubyqre. V cerqvpg gung, nobhg n lrne sebz abj, V'yy rqvg guvf pbzzrag gb ergebnpgviryl znxr zlfrys ybbx oevyyvnag. Ng guvf cbvag, V fubhyq cebonoyl vafreg fbzr xvaq bs rzbgvpba be fbzrguvat gb vaqvpngr gung V'z abg pbzcyrgryl frevbhf. Ba frpbaq gubhtug, V pbhyq qb gung ergebnpgviryl nf jryy.
Unccl arj lrne, YrffJebat! Guvf lrne, znl nyy bs hf or yrff jebat guna jr jrer ynfg lrne!
C.F. V'q or tengrshy sbe ercyl pbzzragf nybat gur yvarf bs, fnl, "Arire! Pyrneyl lbh ner rvgure znq be -- vs guvf cerqvpgvba pbzrf gehr -- n travhf!" Gunaxf va nqinapr.
Never! Clearly you are either mad or -- if this prediction comes true -- a genius!
It is hard for me to articulate how unlikely this is to occur. You are either the most sublime genius to ever exist, or a giant fool.
Not to be a drag, but your evil schemes will come to naught. When you edit a post it changes the date next to your name and adds an asterisk at the end, thereby destroying your illusion of prescience.
EDIT: The italicized and bolded text above is incorrect as pointed out by wedrifid.
Does it?
EDIT: This comment has been edited after the child comment.
EDIT: Didn't think so. The asterix is added, of course. The date doesn't change.
EDIT: In case the purpose of this was missed (it seems to have been). I saw something wrong, but before I corrected I realized that I might be overconfident. So the right thing to do is test!
I tested it for myself and falsified my original claim about the date. Thanks for making me less wrong.
oh yeah?
Two can play at this game.
I don't know what to say...
Incorrect, since nyan_sandwich's post lacks the asterix after the posting time marking an edited post.
Solvent didn't edit ver comment, either. Solvent's point was that, a year from now, Costanza can just say that nyan_sandwich made up a fake quote.
irrelevant, presence or absence of the asterix for the quoted post is what matters.
Not at anywhere near the same level of plausibility. Lack of asterix means definite proof that the quote is fake.
I could find a comment of yours that you edited after publishing, and comment a fake "quote of the original" on it.
See, I agree that having an unedited comment is very important for verifying predictions later- but nyansandwich's comment won't count to a future reader as infallible evidence of what Costanza once said. The future reader must consider the possibility that nyansandwich was lying.
(Of course, ve wasn't. But we're all being pedantic here.)
Dammit, I forgot that the underscore in nyan sandwich's name would translate into italics. And for obvious reasons, I ain't editing that comment.
So what? None of that impacts my point that the relation between the two comment pairs in question is not symmetric in the way originally implied.
I predict changes will be made to LessWrong's interface within the year that will make this impossible (e.g. a 'edited' date marker). 50%
I also predict you will forget about this comment or for some other reason not in fact edit it. 90%
Okay, this seems like nothing could possibly go wrong just from my making some educated guesses, right?
90%: the probabilities in this post are poorly calibrated, but things I think are likely will probably happen, and the converse is also true.
10%: I'll learn to play Magic: the Gathering by 2013.
.1%: Singularity occurs before January 1, 2013.
80%: Occupy protests do not end before May.
90%: Judge Rotenberg Center continues torturing children at least through December 31, 2012.
99% There will be at least one update to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality this year.
99% The Winds of Winter will not be released this year.
85% George R. R. Martin will not die this year.
Well, there are potential self-fulfilling prophecy effects, but I suspect the only one for which they're worth even mentioning is #2, and it's not clear that such an effect would constitute "going wrong".
How would you define "end"? Without a coherent leadership OWS cannot formally declare themselves finished. The most likely "end" for OWS will be that most of the protesters go home while a few stragglers will stick around for years.
That's a good point. Maybe there's a problem with my concept of "end" as it relates to OWS protests.
I expect them to continue to be common and happen a bunch (as much as they're happening now or more) at least until May. After that, who knows...
Do you think you could make a hundred predictions like "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality will be updated this year" or "The Winds of Winter will not be released this year" and only be wrong once? Maybe you're right, but your confidence seems high to me. (Note that 98% resp. 96% allows you two resp. four errors.)
Yes, I really mean that high confidence. The Winds of Winter is the sixth in a series; the fifth was released in July, six years after the fourth, which was released two years after it was due and five years after the third book. The author is slipping, the books are getting longer and less manageable and the author enjoys watching football. He's also spent a LONG time promoting his latest book so aggressively I'm just about sure he can't have been writing for months. It's just barely conceivable he could deliver a manuscript to a publisher in 2012, but if so, it would be late 2012, and it would be published in 2013. It essentially would be fighting the barriers of what's possible for him to do for him to actually get it done in time for a 2012 release date. Another author might do it, but not him and not his thousand-page doorstoppers.
For a non-abandoned fic like HP:MoR, with 76 updates in 22 months, where Eliezer actually has the next chapter completed already and is just trying to do two at once, it will take a catastrophe to keep an update from happening this year. (Hmm. Given the high likelihood of a catastrophe happening, maybe I did guess too high there.)
I still think you are about 5% too high on both of those predictions, but at least you aren't being stupid in arriving at your probabilities.
(By the way, if you are wrong, you've done your future self a service by writing this comment - explaining in detail your reasons is one of the few known effective tactics against hindsight bias.)
Okay, sure. Thank you. Actually, you might be right. Maybe I did fail to consider certain possibilities that could keep those things from happening how I assumed. Of course, that would be evidence in favor of my other prediction:
A bit off topic, but you seem to be doing this kind of thing a lot: is there any trick for calibrating high-/low-probability events? I can see how to figure out whether my 50% is 50% or 40%, but I'd need to make a lot of predictions to get a statistically useful number of 1% predictions wrong, even if my 1% is really 2% (a serious error!)
You can know that your numbers were wrong, if many of the 1-2% predictions become true. But there is no way to find out (by looking at the outcome) whether it was 1% or 2% without several hundred predictions.
Are there any tricks? Base-rates/frequencies (plus Laplace's law) and breaking down conjunctions (#2 and 3 in http://www.gwern.net/Prediction%20markets#how-i-make-predictions ).
While I know nothing about the case, given that sentence has the same structure as 'have you stopped beating your wife' it may be hard to place a prediction on.
That's why you think it's unreasonable to accuse them of torture.
I'll consider myself to have guessed wrong if it comes out that they were really never torturing anyone at all to begin with. I will not, however, use a euphemism when what I mean is "torture".
Rotenburg Center
I agree that this is torture. However, I recommend adding links for subjects which aren't common knowledge.
Another school-- uses mace rather than electric shocks
I have no strong opinion about when or whether these practices will be stopped.
It doesn't have the same structure at all. "No" is always the preferred response to "do you continue to beat your wife?" The preferred answer of a strict reading of "have you stopped beating your wife?" depends on whether you had been previously (which sets up the trap of the joke).
"Did they continue torturing children?" "No" implies they had in the past.
"Did they continue torturing children?" "Yes" is only true if they did so in the past and are continuing to do so.
What I meant was without assuming a value for 'they have tortured children in the past' (which I assume to be at least slightly controversial) you cannot give a probability to it.
Though I suppose if they have not tortured children in the past the correct probability of continuation would be 0% as it is impossible. Same as the prediction "P&¬P." (Though realistically you'd want to incorporate your assessment of the available evidence, see my comment on kalla724's post).
I quite like prediction that Sean Carrol made on his blog. So much so, I will adopt them in full. They are, after all, based on Science!
Freely-falling objects will accelerate toward the ground at an approximately constant rate, up to corrections due to air resistance.
Of all the Radium-226 nuclei on the Earth today, 0.04% will decay by the end of the year.
A line drawn between any planet (or even dwarf planet) and the Sun will sweep out equal areas in equal times.
Hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere will rotate counterclockwise as seen from above.
The pressure of a gas squeezed in a piston will rise inversely with the change in volume.
Electric charges in motion will give rise to magnetic fields.
The energy of an object at rest whose mass decreases will also decrease, by the change in mass times the speed of light squared.
The content of the world’s genomes will gradually evolve in ways determined by fitness in a given environment, sexual selection, and random chance.
The entropy of closed systems will increase.
People will do many stupid things, and some surprisingly smart ones.
Death, taxes.
All of these are contingent on the degree of certainty the available evidence allows us to have in the theories that predict these results. I don't think there's any degree of evidence that would make a 100% prediction rational. (To illustrate, consider independently the probabilities that all physicists are part of a conspiracy, supernatural entities exist and/or we live in a simulation.)
I realise this was probably meant flippantly, but there is a serious point to be made about confusing 'the best estimates based on our currently available knowledge and theory' and 'immutable laws of the universe.'
Yep! :)
P(Eliezer Yudkowsky will make a prediction on PredictionBook before 2013. ) = 0.20
Note: I increased my probability estimate since I originally made the prediction based on the fact that I just made a comment in a high-profile thread in the Main section discussing it.
The year report for the 2012 of the SIAI will be approximately the same as for the 2011. No essentially new things mentioned. Confidence 0.9.
At least one event as important as Watson Jeopardy! will be announced by IBM or some other organization. Confidence 0.8.
Before I give my predictions for this year, a record of how I did on last year's predictions.
Was correct.
I haven't been able to judge this. It looks hard to tell but seems to be correct. However, to a large extent this being correct extended from something I didn't anticipate- it took much longer to actually implement the repeal than I expected, so the repeal took effect fairly late in the year.
I initially gave this 75% but further discussion suggested I was underconfident and so I bounced this up to 95% and was correct.
Was incorrect.
A few such scandals occurred but none of them were in churches nearly large enough. So this was incorrect.
Was incorrect.
So with this out of the way new predictions. I'm not including here any predictions that have an end date of 2013 which I've already put in PredictionBook.
The first four predictions are predictions which are updated versions of predictions from last year:
Clashes between North Korea and South Korea will result in fatalities, or the North Korean government will collapse. Confidence: 75%
The Riemann Hypothesis will not be proven in 2012. Confidence 95%
P != NP will not be resolved in 2013. Confidence 95%
General AI will not be built in 2013. Confidence: 95%
The next set of predictions is about computational complexity:
The relationship between P and BQP will not be resolved in 2012. Confidence: 85%
There will be improvement in efficient matrix multiplication in 2012 that will be discussed in at least one of the following blogs: Combinatorics and more, Shetl-Optimized, Godel's Lost Letter. Confidence: 52%
In 2012 there will be new results for either the group isomorphism problem or the graph isomorphism problem discussed at at least one of the following blogs: Combinatorics and more, Shetl-Optimized, Godel's Lost Letter. Confidence: 52%.
No improvement in factoring integers in a classical setting that has better time-asymptotics than the best current ones will be made in 2012. Confidence: 85%
The next two predictions have to do with the integer complexity problem. (Background on that can be found here.)
No one one will resolve in 2012 whether integer complexity function is asymptotic to 3log_3 n. 58%
I will coauthor at least one paper on integer complexity by 2013. Confidence: 61%
The next few predictions concern space travel and exploration.
Humans will continue to have at least one functioning probe on Martian surface or a satellite around Mars for all of 2012. Confidence: 98%
Russia will lose at least one rocket launch in 2012 . Confidence: 55%
No contact with intelligent aliens be made in 2012: Confidence 96%
The Hubble Telescope will continue functioning though 2012. Confidence: 85%
Miscellaneous predictions:
HPMOR will update at least twice in 2012. Confidence: 75%
In 2012, I will go to at least two open viewing nights for telescopes in the greater Boston area. Confidence: 58%
I will not become a vegetarian in 2012. Confidence: 80%
My mother will not read any books by Steven Pinker this year. Confidence: 85%
I will have a total LessWrong karma of at least 10,000 by the end of the year. Confidence: 75%
Meta-predictions:
At least one of the above predictions will turn out to be correct for reasons that are surprising to me. Confidence: 80%
I find this confusing; I would expect P vs. BQP to be harder to resolve than P vs. NP.
There's a fair bit of reason to think that neither of BQP and NP contains the other. But the primary cause for my reduced confidence is that I don't have a really good understanding of the quantum complexity classes whereas I do have more intuition for the classical classes like P and NP. So I've reduced the confidence accordingly.
If you feel you are relatively ignorant of quantum complexity and want to reduce your reliance on it, you should not simply reduce the number. That anchors on an arbitrary sign of the question. Why reduce 95% rather than the complementary 5%? Your prediction is, roughly, that P vs BQP will be resolved in 6 years. Phrased that way, isn't it overconfident?
Instead you should regress to an outside model. For example, it has been 30 years since Feynman's suggestion, so my outside model is that it won't be resolved in 30 years, so < 3% per year. Edit: this is a doomsday argument.
Also, if you think your inside model says that something is hard, but the number it yields is easier than the outside model, you probably aren't combining your information correctly.
Maybe because that pushes the probabilities towards the zero-knowledge position of 50%. (However, as you say, this isn't a zero-knowledge situation.)
Ok, let's join the party! Personal:
I will manage to rent my grandparent's house before the end of the year 40% I will manage to sell my grandparent's house before the end of the year 15% (Neither of the two happens 45%)
My girlfriend will come to live with me in my flat before the end of the year: 60%
I will manage to stabilize my weight between 70 and 73 kilos: 50%
I will buy more than 50 musical records on physical support (cd / vinyl) 70%
I will finally do a complete inventory of my music collection 30%
In case the previous happens, I will turn out to own more than 1000 albums 80%
I will end up fighting with my very fervent and freshly converted friend because of a joke about religion I made 20%
Sport
Roger Federer will win at least one grand slam tournament or the olympic gold medal 70%
No Italian football team will reach the semifinals of the Europa League or the Champions League 75%
Italy will win between 8 and 12 gold medal at the summer olympics games 80%
(Italian) politics, economy and society
There will be an election round in 2012 80%
Neither of the two biggest parties will get more than 30% of the preferences if the previous happens 70%
Italy won't default 95%
Price of gas will reach a peak greater than 2.00 € / liter 40%
The Catholic Church will still be exempted from the payment of the IMU (tax on the property of buildings) 95%
Miscellaneous
ATLAS and CMS will announce the discovery of the Higgs Boson 95%
No other new particles will be discovered (5 sigma significance) in 2012 60%
HPMOR won't be finished before the end of the year 60%
The mean temperature in Europe during July will be higher than the corresponding one in 2011 75%
The birthrate in September 2013 will be higher than in September 2012.
Worldwide? US?
SOPA will not pass congress. 75%
SOPA will return in some form and cause another internet uproar: 50%
EDIT: Let's make this independent of other bets: Another attempted internet blacklist bill will cause an uproar in 2012. By 'another' I mean not the current version of SOPA currently being processed.
Is the 50% a conjunction of it not passing and then returning to cause an uproar, or is it conditional on it not passing?
fixed
Yes. But not enough to make it feel like the story is moving towards a conclusion.
They will be incremental, enough so that very, very few people will notice any practical impact on their lives. Some advances, however, will be accompanied by a great deal of hype. Evidence will emerge that some treatments which we think work now do not in fact work.
I will continue to believe cryonics is something I would sign up for if I had money to spare, but will also continue to feel too poor to have money to spare.
This isn't really about AGI, but I expect to be amazed by at least one cool new application of computing that vaguely resembles human intelligence.
I'm standing by my 2011 prediction:
I could probably nudge probabilities one way or another if I checked extra year's worth of information, but since I didn't I have no idea which way it will go.
Is that a worldwide prediction?
Yes, that should be understood unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Off the shelf HUD like computer (wearable display) comes out - 30%
Made by Google - 50%
Made by Apple - 40%
Other - 10 %
Um, those last three probabilities add up to 110%.
Fixed, thanks
they don't exclude each other.
HUD like computer? You mean with a wearable display?
Yes, thanks, I added clarification.
All predictions are for 2012.
Homestuck:
Andrew Hussie releases at least one flash lasting longer than 10 minutes: 65%
Karkat, Terezi, John, Dave, Rose and Jade will not be permanently removed from story (Being killed off but returning as a ghost/sprite/whatever doesn't count as being permanently removed; being killed off and spending eternity in a dream-bubble and having no further contribution to the story does): 80%
The hints that Betty Crocker/Her Imperious Condesencion is running post-scratch Desrse will prove to be misdirection on Hussie's part: 20%
Baseball:
The San Francisco Giants will have a winning season. 80%
The Giants will make the postseason (either as NL West Champions or as a Wildcard team): 50%
Pablo Sandoval will hit at least 25 home runs: 80%
Ryan Braun will successfully appeal his suspension: 45%
Albert Pujols will finish the season with a batting average below .300: 65%
Casually wonders how many Homestuckers on LW.
Vriska and Aradia return at an opportune moment: 70%
Andrew Hussie will blow our minds: 1 - E
The Fandom will Flip their shit: 1 - E
Where E > 0. (i don't know how to put a unicode epsilon in this post)
ETA: Okay, so maybe 100% is a mathematical impossibility. Can we settle for an epsilon-delta-esque construct instead?
1.0 is not a probability. All the protons that compose him might simultaneously decay while he's being hit with a back hole and the simulation we're on is shut down. In that case it might be as low as 90% chance of that still happening.
GCat has the good sense not to be prototyped into Jane's kernelsprite before entering the medium: 70%
Tavros, somehow, ascends to God Tier: 5% (fly, pupa! flyyyyyyyyy!)
Jane becomes a catgirl: 40%
All the currently "dead" characters will re-enter the story by the conclusion of Act 7: 40%.
As a side note, had I been aware of this page a week ago, I could have posted my prediction about Jane not actually being dead, and been right.
... . .-. . -. .. - -.-- / .-. ..- .-.. . ...
Oh, a few.
I somehow never thought to combine Homestuck wild mass guessing with prediction markets. And didn't really expect this on LW, for some reason. Holy cow.
Hm, let's try my two favorite pet theories...
In a truly magnificent Moebius double reacharound, The troll universe will turn out to have been created by the kids' session (either pre- or post- scratch): 40% (used to be higher, but now we have some asymmetries between the sessions, like The Tumor, so.)
In an even more bizarre mindscrew that echoes paradox cloning, the various kids and guardians will turn out to be the same people in both sessions (e.g. Poppop Crocker is the very same John we know, the Bro that cuts the meteor is the same one who programmed the auto-responder, etc.). That means that, at least for the Derse dreamers, each of them raised their own guardian, probably inflicting upon them whichever neurosis they got from them in the first place. 35% on this one, because it entails some heavy-duty time shenaniganry. But I still like this one best :3
And on a more light-hearted note... Human-troll sloppy makeouts to happen at any point in the story: 90%
(all these predictions are not time-bound to 2012 - apply until the end of the story, including the Epilogue)
Hussie will tease various ships, but ultimately, none will be made canon: 55%.
More Baseball:
The Giants will take the season series against the A's: 65%.
There will be a bench clearing brawl between the Giants and the Phillies: 15%.
Either the Texas Rangers or the LA Angels will win the AL West: 90%.
There will be at least one believable claim that methane clathrates are being released, rendering climate treaties somewhat irrelevant: 30%
One or more countries will leave the EU monetary union: 50%
Is does this include both voluntarily leaving and being forced out?
It includes both.
I am also predicting, that:
1 - neutrinos will be faster than light in 2012 (60% confidence)
2 - Higgs boson will NOT be seen in 2012 (85% confidence)
Quibble, presumably you mean neutrinos will be proven to be travelling faster than speed of light?
Not proven. The next experiment(s) in 2012 will say the same as those of 2011 and earlier.
Still, the result will not be widely accepted as a proof.
And I give another prediction. Several "Earth like planets" will be in the media. And maybe a few Higgs "near sightings".
My predictions to these topics: No experiment apart from OPERA will measure a neutrino speed >c with a significance of more than 3 sigma in 2012: 85% - where the 15% are mainly related to measurement errors OPERA or others will find a significant error in OPERAs measurements in 2012: 50%
Higgs boson will be seen with a local 5 sigma significance (ATLAS+CMS alone or in combination) near ~125 GeV in 2012: 90% - the current signal is quite clear already, even without the magic 5 sigma. So I expect that new data will increase the significance. From the 10%, a large part is related to possible problems with the LHC, it includes serious analysis problems, bad luck and the simple "there is no higgs". Higgs boson will be seen with a global 5 sigma significance (ATLAS+CMS alone or in combination) near ~125 GeV in 2012: 85% - this needs a bit more data than the local significance.
No other new particles will be seen with 5 sigma significance in 2012: 75% - up to now, I did not see any hint for a new particle from both collaborations, so I think there is no 3sigma evidence for anything at the moment
The LHC will collide protons with lead at the end of 2012: 75% - it was tested in 2011, but technical problems prevented collisions
This is great. You have predictions quite opposite to mines and we will see who is more right quite clearly.
I wish there was more dueling predictions.
World politics:
One or more new 'revolutions' (described as such by international media) will take place. 80% - At least one of which will be in Sub-Saharan Africa: 60%
Fidel Castro will die, or has already died and it will be officially confirmed 90%.
Open hostilities will take place between Iran and another country 60%.
Vladimir Putin will become president of Russia: 95% - There will be significant rioting with civilian injuries in Russia: 70% - There will be substansive political change in Russia 5%.
UK politics
The coalition government will break up 10%. - One of the 3 major parties will change leader 50%.
Some random personal predictions as I find the exercise interesting:
I will have sexual interactions with one or more women. 95% [Here defining sexual interactions as something that would require an 18 certificate to display in a film, and women by their own self definition). - I will have an 'official' relationship 25% (defined as one where we both alter our facebook statuses to 'in a relationship'.) - I will have sexual relations with one or more men 1% (the prospect doesn't currently appeal to me, but given my observations of sexual preference variability in others I can't rule it out).
I will graduate university this summer. 90% - Assuming I graduate it will be with a grade of 2:1. 80% 1st 10% Other 10%
I will miss one or more deadlines due to ongoing depression and anxiety issues 80% (I would like to say lower, but given past results that seems unlikely from an outside view. )
I will break at at least one debating competition. 70%. (Break meaning entering semi finals or final depending on size of competition). I will win a Debating competition 20%.
I will attend the European debating championships. 80%. Assuming the preceding: I will be in the top half of speaker scores 95%. Top 100 60%. Top 50 10%. Break 25%.
Travel outisde UK 99%. (I intend to book tickets in the next week), - Travel outside EU 50% (no current plans but most of yea is unplanned and I wish to.
LW
This post will have positive Karma 90%. - Karma >5 50%. - Karma >10 10%.
What about a relationship where one of the parties doesn't have a facebook account (or some other circumstance where there is a definite/mutually-acknowledged/etc relationship, but no facebook status change)?
I honestly had not considered the possibility or entering a relationship with someone who isn't on facebook its essentially universal in my social group.
Facebook is a useful way of quantifying public acknowledgement, I suppose a similar requirement would be 'introduces the other as my boyfriend/girlfriend,' but that can depend on audience in a way facebook does not.
The motivation for defining 'official' relationships was to separate it from other relationships I've had which were more casual (I've known people who would define 'sleeping with same person 2+ times a relationship, which doesn't fit my purposes).
For the purposes of this prediction I will qualify it to "one where we both alter our facebook statuses to 'in a relationship' Or if the other party does not use facebook, I change mine."
At what point will you check the Karma value? The end of the year?
Yes, same as all other predictions.
My default response to a comment predicting its own karma is to downvote.
Even those predicting negative karma?
Yes. It's not about making their prediction right or wrong, it's about making those comments less visible.
Do you have a principled objection to discussing comment karma? It seems a fairly value neutral thing to make predictions of, I was trying to predict how much the readers of this post would consider it relevant/interesting.
It leads to people getting too cute and meta, and drifting away from actual content. Some contexts of discussing karma are fine (like asking for an explanation of downvotes), but making predictions of the karma of the very post you're composing is like a self-referential statement: often meaningless, and trivial even when correct.
Interesting, I considered whether that question would prime people to vote up, evidently not in your case.
I guess I might as well roll the dice. I'm just going to throw out predictions, not give percent probabilities, because I'm not entirely certain where I'd pull the numbers out of (besides the usual place, heh).
I will place in the top 5 for the Quantified Health Prize (either by myself or as part of a team), conditional on me submitting an entry that took me at least 40 hours of work: 95%
If the Indianapolis Colts draft Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning will not play in another NFL sanctioned game. 75%