Mantic Monday 6/21/21

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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