Jun 22, 2021
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-62121
Among this month’s interesting Metaculus predictions:
If Puerto Rico gets statehood, will their first two senators both be Democrats? 50%. I’d seen accusations that the Democrats want Puerto Rican statehood to seize a Senate advantage, and counterarguments that no, PR isn’t as solid-blue as people like to think, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen the “risk” of a PR Republican Senator quantified. Higher than I thought!
Will Jeff Bezos make a big investment in anti-aging this
year? 25%
Aubrey de Grey has hinted that somebody really big is about to get
into the anti-aging/longevity field, and speculation has centered
on a newly-retired and not-getting-any-younger (so far!) Jeff
Bezos. This prediction resolves as true if Bezos puts at least $50
million into anti-aging.
Will crypto sites default before
2023? Bitmex 26%,
Binance 15%,
Coinbase 5%
Not many predictions here, so don’t take these numbers too
seriously. I also don’t know what a “default” would mean in this
sense - default to at least one customer, but everyone else is
okay? Lose all its money to a hack?
What will Prospera’s population be in
2035? Approximately
0
Prospera is a charter city taking shape in Honduras;
see here for
more. They’re planning to have 10,000 residents by 2025, and
100,000 by some unspecified point in the future. Metaculus doesn’t
think it will happen; more than half of forecasters say they’ll
have fewer than 100 residents in 2035 (presumably because they have
failed and ceased to exist) and only 10% of forecasters think
they’ll have more than 10,000, which would be a bare minimum for
partial success. So far