Grading 2019 Predictions

I make predictions every year to put empirical tests on my model of the world. I tend to do a lot of predictions, in order to get a larger dataset, and at the end of the year, I grade them. These were made last year in March.  I’ve placed levels of confidence for each prediction with the odds I would bet on those outcomes in the vein of Bryan Caplan. I’ve created a chart at the end to show my calibration versus perfect calibration.

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95% ✔️
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90% (was 45% exactly)
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 70%
  4. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60% ✔️
  5. No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95% ✔️
  6. The UK will not leave the EU this year: 80% ✔️
  7. North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95% ✔️
  8. North Korea will not conduct a nuclear test this year: 60% ✔️
  9. North Korea will not conduct a missile test this year: 60% They conducted 10, with several launching many missiles
  10. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons entirely, contingent on US troops staying in the Korean peninsula: 99% ✔️
  11. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons as a result of any negotiations: 90% ✔️
  12. Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70% ✔️
  13. S&P 500 2019 >10% growth (from 2506 on Jan 1): 60% ✔️
  14. S&P 500 will be between 2400 and 3100: 80% (80% confidence interval) was 3231
  15. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 6%: 80% ✔️
  16. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 5%: 70% ✔️
  17. WTI Crude Oil price up by 10% (from $45.41): 70% ✔️
  18. Price of Bitcoin in dollars up over the year (Coinbase – 3823 Jan 1): 70% ✔️ was $7163
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $8,000 (does not double): 60% ✔️
  20. Price of Bitcoin > $1900 (does not lose half value): 70% ✔️
  21. Price of Bitcoin < $12,000 (does not triple): 70% ✔️
  22. Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 80% ✔️
  23. No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 99% ✔️
  24. US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 95% ✔️
  25. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95% ✔️
  26. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99% ✔️
  27. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft/Waymo in a location I am living: 95% ✔️
  28. I will not be able to order groceries on self-driving cars in a location I am living: 90% ✔️
  29. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft/Waymo without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 80% ✔️ This is tough. You can get self driving cars in Phoenix, but only if you’re part of the Waymo beta and so far they are free, so no “buying”.
  30. The artificial general intelligence alignment problem will not be seen as the most important problem facing humanity: 99% ✔️
  31. Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2019: 99% ✔️
  32. SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch again this year: 90% ✔️
  33. SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 60%
  34. SpaceX will test the “Starship” mock up this year: 70% ✔️ (pretty sure I just meant this giant water tower thing, not a real launch)
  35. Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99% ✔️ (lol)
  36. Border wall construction not complete by end of 2019: 99% ✔️ (some construction occurred, mostly replacing existing wall)
  37. National Debt increases by >$1 trillion (from
    $21,943,897,000,000): 90% ✔️ (was $23.201 trillion on Jan 1 2020)
  38. There will not be a significant decrease in trade barriers between US and China from pre-2017 tariff levels: 90% ✔️
  39. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Bernie Sanders: 80% ✔️ (front runner on Jan 1 was Biden)
  40. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Kamala Harris: 80% ✔️
  41. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Beto O’Rourke: 80% ✔️
  42. Trump not removed from office or resign: 95% ✔️
  43. Trump not impeached: 70% I was not expecting this
  44. No CRISPR edited babies will be born: 80% (it turns out the researcher responsible for the two 2018 CRISPR edited babies had already treated a third unborn child in 2018 when the story broke. Apparently the third baby was born in 2019 if you carefully read Xinhua, so technically this prediction is wrong, although I meant no other researcher would do anything. Remember to properly word your predictions!)
  45. No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90% ✔️ (they basically only do continuing resolutions now)
  46. Some tariffs raised: 90% ✔️ (like a bunch)
  47. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90% ✔️
  • I got 4 of 6 predictions correct at 60% confidence
  • I got 7 of 9 predictions correct at 70% confidence
  • I got 7 of 9 predictions correct at 80% confidence
  • I got 8 of 9 predictions correct at 90% confidence
  • I got 7 of 7 predictions correct at 95% confidence
  • I got 6 of 6 predictions correct at 99% confidence

Overall, not bad at all, and we should note that from last year’s grading, my 60% confidence predictions have tended to be overconfident. I only had 6 of those predictions this year, so actually 66% is the closest I could have been to perfect calibration. 70% also ended up being a bit overconfident, but a single additional missed prediction here would have dropped me down to 66% as well. Had I moved one of my correct 70% predictions to 80%, I would have been perfectly calibrated.

Combining this data and data from last year gives:

  • I got 11 of 15 predictions correct (73%) at 60% confidence
  • I got 14 of 20 predictions correct (70%) at 70% confidence
  • I got 14 of 17 predictions correct (82%) at 80% confidence
  • I got 14 of 15 predictions correct (93%) at 90% confidence
  • I got 16 of 17 predictions correct (94%) at 95% confidence
  • I got 10 of 10 predictions correct (100%) at 99% confidence

In 2018, as I noted in the post last year, I should have made some of my 60% predictions at a higher confidence, but other than that, these predictions are remarkably well calibrated if I do say so myself.

I hope to post my 2020 predictions soon.

2019 Predictions

I’ve made predictions for the past several years, and here are my predictions for 2019, a bit late. I’ve noticed that when discussing politics or difficult subjects with other people with whom I have strong differences, a possible avenue of understanding is to make a prediction about the world with odds. Most people don’t accept these bets or predictions, which I think are one of the best ways to test different models of the world against each other. Nonetheless, I think it’s personally beneficial to list predictions and accompanying odds each year to see test my model of the world.

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95%
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90%
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 70%
  4. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
  5. No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95%
  6. The UK will not leave the EU this year: 80%
  7. North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95%
  8. North Korea will not conduct a nuclear test this year: 60%
  9. North Korea will not conduct a missile test this year: 60%
  10. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons entirely, contingent on US troops staying in the Korean peninsula: 99%.
  11. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons as a result of any negotiations: 90%
  12. Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70%
  13. S&P 500 2019 >10% growth (from 2506 on Jan 1): 60%
  14. S&P 500 will be between 2400 and 3100: 80% (80% confidence interval)
  15. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 6%: 80%
  16. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 5%: 70%
  17. WTI Crude Oil price up by 10% (from $45.41): 70%
  18. Price of Bitcoin in dollars up over the year (Coinbase – 3823 Jan 1): 70%
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $8,000 (does not double): 60%
  20. Price of Bitcoin > $1900 (does not lose half value): 70%
  21. Price of Bitcoin < $12,000 (does not triple): 70%
  22. Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 80%
  23. No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 99%
  24. US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 95%
  25. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95%
  26. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  27. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft/Waymo in a location I am living: 95%
  28. I will not be able to order groceries on self-driving cars in a location I am living: 90%
  29. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft/Waymo without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 80%
  30. The artificial general intelligence alignment problem will not be seen as the most important problem facing humanity: 99%
  31. Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2018: 99%
  32. SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch again this year: 90%
  33. SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 60%
  34. SpaceX will test the “Starship” mock up this year: 70%
  35. Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99% (lol)
  36. Border wall construction not complete by end of 2018: 99%
  37. National Debt increases by >$1 trillion (from
    $21,943,897,000,000): 90%
  38. There will not be a significant decrease in trade barriers between US and China from pre-2017 tariff levels: 90%
  39. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Bernie Sanders: 80%
  40. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Kamala Harris: 80%
  41. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Beto O’Rourke: 80%
  42. Trump not removed from office or resign: 95%
  43. Trump not impeached: 70%
  44. No CRISPR edited babies will be born: 80%
  45. No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90%
  46. Some tariffs raised: 90%
  47. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90%

I’d like to comment on every prediction, but I’m afraid it would take too much time. The predictions I find most interesting are whether the UK will leave the EU. I’m going by what predictions markets say, but I’m not really sure it will play out with only a few weeks to go and no deal. I’m also quite interested in the Democratic Presidential primary race, but I’m afraid the nomination will be trending towards someone pretty left wing. I’m also interested in whether Trump will be removed from office. I put the chances of Trump being impeached at 30% to stay in line with prediction markets, but my gut is that I should put that chance even lower.

Grading 2018 Predictions

I make predictions at the beginning of every year, and at the end of the year, I grade them. Science and the gathering of knowledge requires making predictions to test your models and see how they work in the real world. Most pundits on TV make predictions without weights attached to them. I’ve placed levels of confidence for each prediction with the odds I would bet on those outcomes in the vein of Bryan Caplan. I’ve created a chart at the end to show my calibration versus perfect calibration.

Predictions for 2018:

World Events

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95%
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90%
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 80%
  4. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
  5. No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95%
  6. The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
  7. No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
  8. North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95%
  9. North Korea will conduct a nuclear test this year: 70%
  10. North Korea will conduct a missile test this year: 95%
  11. Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70%
  12. S&P 500 2018 >10% growth: 60%
  13. S&P 500 will be between 2500 and 3200: 80% (80% confidence interval)
  14. Unemployment rate December 2018 < 6%: 80%
  15. Unemployment rate December 2018 < 5%: 60%
  16. WTI Crude Oil price up by 10%: 60%
  17. Price of Bitcoin > $10,000: 70%
  18. Price of Bitcoin < $30,000: 60%
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $100,000: 70%
  20. Lightning Network available (I can complete a transaction on LN): 80%
  21. Drivechain development “complete”: 70%
  22. Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 70%
  23. No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 95%
  24. US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 90%
  25. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95%
  26. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  27. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 95%
  28. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
  29. Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2018: 95%
  30. SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will attempt to launch this year (can fail on launch): 95%
  31. SpaceX will not bring humans to low earth orbit: 60%
  32. No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
  33. Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99%
  34. Border wall construction not complete by end of 2018: 99%
  35. Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80% (oh yeah)
  36. No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90%
  37. US National Debt to increase by more than 2017 increase (~$500B): 70%
  38. Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%
  39. Some tariffs raised: 90% (a lot on China)
  40. The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 70%
  41. Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 70% (hard to say)
  42. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90%
  43. Mexican government does not pay for wall 99% (repeat)
  44. Trump not removed from office (also no Trump resignation): 95%
  45. Democrats do not win control of Senate: 60%
  46. Democrats win control of House: 60%

Postlibertarian

  1. postlibertarian.com to have 10 new posts by July 1, 2018: 80%
  2. postlibertarian.com to have 20 new posts this year: 80%
  3. Postlibertarian to have more hits than last year: 70%
  • Of items I marked as 60% confident, 7 were correct out of 9.
  • Of items I marked as 70% confident, 7 were correct out of 11.
  • Of items I marked as 80% confident, 7 were correct out of 8.
  • Of items I marked as 90% confident, 6 were correct out of 6.
  • Of items I marked as 95% confident, 9 were correct out of 10.
  • Of items I marked as 99% confident, 4 were correct out of 4.

It appears I was pretty underconfident on my 60% predictions. Interestingly, that’s also where I did worst last year. There were only 9 total predictions at 60% confidence, so the ideal would have been to have 5 of those correct. Of those, I likely should have been more confident on SpaceX missing its then current estimate of launching a crewed mission by the end of 2018. Indeed, I’m not sure what I’d predict their chances are of launching a crewed flight in 2019, as I couldn’t imagine it being higher than 70% right now, but we’ll see. My bitcoin price predictions were again somewhat laughable as they were last year.

I suspect I have a systemic calibration issue with 60% confidence level predictions. Over the past two years I’ve been 17/22 or 77.3%. which is distinctly higher than my 70% confidence predictions. Still, that’s not a huge sample size, but I’m not sure exactly how I can be relatively correct or even slightly overconfident in my 70% predictions, but be *more often correct* about my 60% predictions which I don’t claim to know as much about.

I hope to post my 2019 predictions soon, but unfortunately my day job has had to take priority early this year. If you’d like to combat the opportunity cost of me working on this blog instead of real paying work, feel free to send me some Bitcoin at the address in the sidebar (
13bhBWyRDAePCNEejZoxCqeFvdXyiFQfYc ), or if Bitcoin is too annoying, just share your favorite of my blog posts from last year with your friends on or off the internet. Thanks!

Prediction Markets: What are they and why are they useful?

Given the importance of the topic to this blog, I thought it best to create a discussion of prediction markets here that I can refer back to. In the process of researching this topic, I found some other resources of varying quality which I will be referring out to as necessary. The best analysis is Paul Sztorc’s Prediction Market Sequence, which is unfortunately kind of buried under a subsection of the Bitcoin Hivemind website, and is also a combined ~75 pages (!). I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants more details, but if you only want to read 3000 words, this blog post will cover a lot of the main ideas.

What is a prediction market?

Prediction markets are exchanges where you can buy and sell “derivatives”  (also referred to as shares, contracts, options, depending on context) on whether a given event will occur. They can be simple yes or no questions, or they can be more complicated, which we will cover later. The market price reflects what people believe to be the probability of the event occurring. A simple example would be a prediction market on whether Donald Trump will win the 2020 election. Suppose each contract resolves to $1. If you buy a “yes” option at 40% or 40¢ and then Trump wins, you’d be able to redeem it after the event at 100% or $1. If he loses, the share value would be 0% or $0. Other prediction markets can use any pricing scheme reflecting 0-100%.

PredictIt.org, a well known prediction market site, uses shares that resolve to $1 or $0 with trading occurring in between those prices until the event occurs. A 70¢ price would indicate a market belief of 70% in the event occurring. This is similar to betting markets on external events (like betting on the outcome of sports events) and also futures markets, where additional contracts can be created as long as there is interest in trading them, unlike stocks or bonds which are issued by an organization in limited quantities.

For more info, check out the first three sections of Paul Sztorc’s first PM paper.

What’s the point of a prediction market, is it just a way to gamble?

They can be used for gambling, but that is not their most interesting use case. Prediction markets aggregate information, and so they are sometimes called information markets. They offer a profit incentive for someone to share information publicly or for you to investigate something to try and uncover information. For example, in 2016, there wasn’t a great deal of presidential election polling in Wisconsin and other Midwest states. You might have been able to leverage information you found out about Trump’s support among Obama voters in those areas to place bets on Trump doing better in the electoral college. While talking heads on TV get paid for giving opinions, they don’t get paid for correct ones; prediction markets change that, allowing for a direct reward mechanism for correct predictions. Prediction markets thus improve the quality of predictions while simultaneously cutting through the self aggrandizing opinionators who have nothing on the line.

Aggregation of information is a concept so broadly applicable, it’s hard to convey the potential impact of its widespread use. At the very least, we would have a significant improvement in forecasting due to the profit incentive of those with useful information as well as those who can find out information and profit off its discovery. In the best case, we can aggregate all human knowledge into singular probabilistic forecasts about the future, providing real world application and feedback of empirical methods for everyone’s benefit.

If prediction markets are so great, why aren’t they being used already?

They are being used in limited ways, although they face many challenges. One is legal; the US has made it illegal to gamble on the internet. That means no large scale prediction markets can function in the US. PredictIt.org, a well known politics prediction market, has limitations on the amounts individuals can stake in a market as well as the number of individuals allowed in a single market. This limits the liquidity and financial interest in prediction markets. There is also the fact that knowledge about them isn’t widely dispersed; it’s a niche topic for obscure blog posts and academic papers.

Even if banned publicly, private organizations have an incentive to use prediction markets to improve their forecasting. Why haven’t more done so?

Prediction markets don’t necessarily mesh well with human organizations; managers may not be optimizing for the best information, but rather the decision making policies that make them look good. Dan Ariely writes how resistant companies are to conduct experiments that would actually give them better information; experimenting on customers is seen as immoral even if that results in a company never improving the products it provides for fear of trying new things.  In addition, as Bryan Caplan points out, markets themselves aren’t very popular generally, and the Senate shut down a Defense Department experiment on prediction markets because Ron Wyden found it “grotesque”, despite the obvious national security incentives to learn as much information about security threats as possible.  Paul Sztorc discusses similar challenges prediction markets face in his first paper, linked earlier. Prediction markets challenge the status quo and conventional wisdom and thus may never be adopted in organizations with established hierarchies.

I believe that in addition to the points Sztorc makes, prediction markets are simply expensive to set up. You need a market infrastructure (likely a digital platform, secure database architectures, etc) but also a mechanism for resolution, a decision structure for what markets will be created, and of course money to seed the market (If you’d like to learn more about market seeding, this blog post dives into Hanson’s logarithmic market scoring rule). You also need people to know to go to your market to make predictions; if no one is going to make predictions or buy shares on your market, other people won’t be incentivized to either. This is a network effect that may be hard to overcome.

So why are we talking about them if they can’t exist in real life?

One reason is to increase the awareness of the potential of prediction market to the readers of this blog. But the big reason I’m talking about prediction markets right now (as well as Paul Sztorc) is because of the rise of cryptocurrencies. Many of the social challenges to prediction markets can be overcome by instituting prediction markets on decentralized platforms and trading the contracts in cryptocurrencies. If you need more background on cryptocurrencies, I have some previous blog posts.

Prediction market projects on distributed blockchains, like Bitcoin Hivemind and the recently launched Augur, cannot be blocked by traditional legal prohibitions.  They also don’t need permission from the established experts in a field in order to make predictions. They are, however, more expensive than prediction markets like PredictIt or Betfair; they may require additional money to transact and specific cryptocurrency expertise to enter, and they risk uncertainty in how dispute resolution will occur in this new space. Nonetheless, many of these risks and costs may decrease over time as this technology becomes more familiar. Their location on a blockchain of course also means they are not just censorship-resistant, but effectively immortal.

Furthermore, prediction markets can do much more than the simple binary option market we discussed before.

What else can prediction markets do?

Ok, it starts to get complicated here. I’m mostly pulling from Paul Sztorc’s second paper on prediction markets (Unlocking the Power of Prediction Markets). Prediction markets can also create scaled markets instead of simple Yes/No binary markets. This is like trading a stock. You can buy Apple at 100 and sell at 200. The only difference is that the prediction market ceases after the event occurs, so instead of buying Trump at 40¢, you could buy Trump at 250 electoral votes in August 2016 and your share would mature at 304, since that is the total number he received when the electoral votes were counted in December. On such a trade, you’d receive a profit for guessing that Trump would receive more than 250, and the total profit would relate to how much more the ultimate “price” or quantity beat the price you paid.

The more interesting addition is the use of multiple dimensions. For example, you could create a market with 4 outcomes trading across two dimensions: Unemployment up year over year and whether Trump adds tariffs to Chinese imports. The resulting percentages should yield a relationship in how the world views these events; it’d be likely additional tariffs would increase the expected unemployment, but the prediction market would tell us if the expected effect were certain or uncertain. If we used a scaled dimension, we could even see the magnitude.

This is pretty powerful. I highly recommend Sztorc’s paper on this, as even more complex markets could tell us more detailed info (and he has nice illustrations). However, we should note that more complex markets require more complex contracts embedded into the blockchain. Blockchains don’t scale well (so far), so complex contracts may result in expensive transaction fees, and the multiple bets you can place may mean overall liquidity is low. If liquidity is low, people may not feel like betting is worth their time, since large bets might not be possible, reducing the incentive to research hidden information.

What are some examples of prediction markets?

The simplest prediction markets are already in existence at places like Betfair and PredictIt. For those betting markets to be useful to us, those websites have to share our interest in betting on things. And while this is generally true for broad markets (like prediction markets for president or senate seats), there are very few places you can easily place a bet on something other than company or commodity stock prices, political races, or sports. Moreover, current prediction markets have various problems, like legality and limitations on bets.

So there are simple prediction markets, like binary options on whether an event will occur, that could be useful to those who are curious about the world. Examples might include current events, like North Korean nuclear tests before the end of next year. North Korea might even buy shares anonymously (especially if this is a cryptocurrency market) which could actually directly convey information from inside North Korea in a way we never have before, albeit by directly financing a dictatorship. We will talk more about the criminal uses of prediction markets later.

Paul Sztorc points out in “Extra-Predictive Applications of Prediction Markets” that prediction markets could offer an easier way to bet on company stocks. You wouldn’t need a brokerage account with a bank, just access to a cryptocurrency. Perhaps this is more difficult for less tech savvy users to get than a bank account, but perhaps not. Many foreigners or people without good access to banking might not be able to trade in stocks. This would allow them to have a portfolio. It’s Finance 101 that you should diversify your assets to save for the future and hedge against risk, yet many people without access to banking and financial markets have no way to diversify their assets. With a prediction market tied to the S&P 500 price, you could simply buy a contract and you’d immediately have an asset that tracks the general stock market. In fact, you could use something similar to track any publicly known stock or ETF.

This would also allow for insider trading similar to the North Korean nuclear weapons market. Interestingly, this is a strength of the market, causing any insider knowledge to be quickly dispersed to the outside world. That’s actually another fascinating application Sztorc discusses: whistleblowers.

Whistleblowers risk lawsuits, job loss, prison time, and their lives, and yet they are guaranteed nothing in return, even if successful. Can we do better?

Sztorc goes on to point out that whistleblowers could collect money for their knowledge, providing more of a safe haven for coming forward sooner.

There are other fascinating applications for public construction, which would allow public betting on whether a project would complete on time.  This could be used to keep public officials who awarded the contracts accountable and called out directly when making corrupt deals. You could also make markets estimating what the expected level of depreciation are for various new models of cars to assist people in buying cars that will retain their value. Nominal GDP futures markets are an idea that has been discussed on this blog as a useful tool in monetary policy, providing feedback for setting interest rates.

Prediction markets don’t even have to be used just for information gathering, as Sztorc points out. They can be used as insurance as well. There could be a market for natural disasters which allows people to place bets on events that they don’t have any additional knowledge on, but simply want to be insured against poor outcomes. They can then collect the winnings of the bet as their insurance claim.

The possibilities for simple single event prediction markets are countless. But there are even more interesting examples when we get more complicated markets.

How can we get more complicated than North Korea using insider trading to make money off of their own weapons program through online cryptocurrency betting markets?

It’s time to explore multidimensional prediction markets and in particular conditional prediction markets. Robin Hanson has suggested conditional prediction markets for publicly traded companies. One dimension would be the company’s stock price and the other would be whether they fire their CEO. It would provide immediate input from the market on whether people believe the CEO is actually useful and adding value to a company. If the projected company value was similar to or higher if the CEO was fired, that would provide good justification for getting a new CEO.

I also like the idea of a conditional prediction market for candidate policies, conditional on them getting elected. This would provide feedback on whether anyone actually believed the candidates’ promises to deliver on various policies. One can imagine cultural norms arising where candidates had to provide proof that they had purchased significant amounts of shares that they would carry out the policy if elected. Political campaigns might then be more substantial, focusing on policies candidates had demonstrated they were actually committed to.

Robin Hanson has also suggested the idea of Futarchy, where prediction markets are created to predict the outcome of various policies, conditional on their implementation. He proposes the concept of “voting values, but betting beliefs”, where legislative bodies would vote on what we would want as an outcome of some policy, and then commit to implementing whatever policy is favored by prediction markets. It’s an interesting idea although it mostly moves the debate in legislatures from “what policy should be undertaken?” to “what policy indicator are we trying to maximize?”. That may be a better debate, but if poorly chosen, the indicator could maximize something to the detriment of the polity. It’s probably still worth investigating on a narrower scale, and certainly the existence of the markets themselves could only improve the information available to policymakers.

Paul Sztorc also discusses some complex applications of multidimensional prediction markets in the Bitcoin space. Unless you are really interested in Bitcoin, they probably won’t catch your eye, so I’ll just mention them briefly, as they are technically impressive. The first is a way to allow Bitcoin investors to gain more information about possible hard forks (changes in the network and blockchain) and insure against them occurring or not occurring. Hard forks are turbulent times in a blockchain, but current discussion is just theoretical arguments of what might happen. Network effects could mean people like the idea but don’t switch to a new fork, but a prediction market could give immediate feedback and allow people to purchase shares of post-fork-Bitcoin while insured against the possibility the fork does not go through.

Also discussed is the idea of “stable” coins which would be futures markets on the exchange rate between Bitcoin and the US dollar, as well as issuing stock through a prediction market. The most interesting to me was the idea of efficiently funding public goods. The basic concept is that you create a prediction market asking whether a public good will be provided (like a lighthouse) and then people who want the public good buy shares of “no”. They won’t lose any money unless someone builds the lighthouse. People intending to build the lighthouse can buy lots of shares of yes, and, when it’s built, the lighthouse builders would reap the benefits of the shares, and those who wanted the public good would pay for it, only if it existed. You can also create lots of different possible “yes” shares, based on publicly available information, like “what letter will be painted on the side of the lighthouse?”, which would allow different teams to compete. For the full write up, check out the paper.

Sztorc concludes with generalizing this idea to “smart contracts” based on prediction markets. This is built on top of the idea that prediction markets are a robust way to determine not only the future, but how the future eventually resolves (i.e. there is a mechanism that ultimately is used to determine what happened in the 2016 election to determine whose shares are paid).

What about insider trading you were talking about earlier? Can you use prediction markets to do other illegal things too?

Mostly likely yes. Just like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, prediction markets can be used for illegal transactions since they aren’t tracked well by the state, and they can be used to bet on unsavory things or incentivize criminal behavior. Insider trading is one of those activities. However, I tend to buy the libertarian argument against the illegal prohibition of insider trading. Crimes require a victim, and insider trading provides information, while its prohibition does little to stem the flow of information to those who have little concern for the law anyway.

However, stranger markets exist as well. Sztorc devotes most of his final paper to discussing prediction markets in deaths, which could be manipulated by assassins. Sztorc is skeptical this could work, as any markets that believe someone is highly unlikely to die are automatically creating an incentive for an assassin and so the market would self regulate back to equilibrium where the predicted death is both more likely and less profitable. I’m still somewhat concerned. The bottom line is that death markets provide an avenue for assassins to reward themselves that does not exist today. Perhaps such incentives would be small compared to the difficulty and bodily harm risked by assassins, but it’s unquestionable that not everything about prediction markets is purely good. That’s expected though; information is powerful and does not always lead to to purely good outcomes.

Conclusion

The benefits and potential of prediction markets to improve the world is vast. As Sztorc states: “Their greatest benefit lies in their unlimited ability to scale”. Conversations are one to one, classes are at best a few lecturers and a few hundred in the audience, while prediction markets can take input from everyone in the entire globe and condense that into comparable and understandable probabilities. Being able to retrieve the world’s knowledge by doing something as simple as checking prices online is nothing short of a revolution in information. With the advent of decentralized blockchains, prediction markets are here to stay; we should embrace their power and potential.

 

2018 Predictions

Untestable knowledgeable cannot be scientific.  To avoid the problems of retroactively placing events into your narrative of the world, predictions must be laid out before events happen. If you try to use your model of the world to create testable predictions, those predictions can be proven right or wrong, and you can actually learn something. Incorrect predictions can help update our models.

This is, of course, the basis for the scientific method, and generally increasing our understanding of the world. Making predictions is also important for making us more humble; we don’t know everything and so putting our beliefs to the test requires us to reduce our certainty until we’ve researched a subject before making baseless claims.  Confidence levels are an important part of predictions, as they force us to think in the context of value and betting: a 90% confidence level means I would take a $100 bet that required me to put up anything less that $90. Moreover, it’s not just a good idea to make predictions to help increase your knowledge; people who have opinions but refuse to predict things with accompanying confidence levels, and therefore refuse to subject their theories to scrutiny and testability, must be classified as more fraudulent and intellectually dishonest.

Before I take a look at how I did this past year, and see if my calibration levels were correct, I should look at some hard fork predictions I made in July:

  1. There will be a Bitcoin Cash block mined before 12 AM August 2, US Eastern time: 80%
  2. The price of Bitcoin Cash at 12 AM August 2, US Eastern time will be <10% of Bitcoin’s price: 70%
  3. The price of Bitcoin Cash on August 5 will be < 10% of Bitcoin’s price: 90%
  4. The price of Bitcoin Cash on September 1 will be < 10% of Bitcoin’s price: 90%
  5. The value of all transactions of Bitcoin Cash around September 1 (maybe averaged over a week?) will be < 10% of the value of all transactions in Bitcoin: 95%

I did not predict that Bitcoin Cash would have long term staying power. In retrospect, I should have had more confidence that it would be similar to Ethereum Classic, which has remained for over a year now.

Now for predictions made at the beginning of the year:

World Events

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of June <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 80%
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
  4. Trump 2017 Average Approval Rating (Gallup) <50%: 70% (reference)
  5. ISIS to still exist as a fighting force in Palmyra, Mosul, or Al-Raqqah: 60%
  6. ISIS to kill < 100 Americans: 80%
  7. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
  8. No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 90% (reference)
  9. France will not vote to leave to the EU: 80%
  10. The UK will trigger Article 50 this year: 70% (reference)
  11. The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
  12. No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
  13. S&P 500 2017 >10% growth: 60%
  14. S&P 500 will be between 2000 and 2850: 80% (80% confidence interval)
  15. Unemployment rate December 2017 < 6% : 70%
  16. WTI Crude Oil price > $60 : 70%
  17. Price of Bitcoin > $750: 60%
  18. Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 50%
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $2000: 80%
  20. There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $1B: 80%
  21. There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $500M: 50%
  22. Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
  23. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 90%
  24. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  25. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 80%
  26. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
  27. Humans will not land on moon by end of 2017: 95%
  28. SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 50%
  29. SpaceX successfully launches a reused rocket: 60%
  30. No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
  31. Actual wall on Mexican border not built: 99%
  32. Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
  33. Corporate Tax Rate will be cut to 20% or below: 50% (it was 21%)
  34. Obamacare (at least mandate, community pricing, pre-existing conditions) not reversed: 80%
  35. Budget deficit will increase: 90% (Not if you go by National Debt increase January to January)
  36. Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70% (hard to say: Rohrbacher AmendmentFY2018 DoJ changes)
  37. Some tariffs raised: 90% (reference)
  38. The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 60%
  39. Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 60%
  40. At least one instance where the executive branch violates a citable civil liberties court case: 70% (I made this too broad as I can cite Berger v New York and the NSA violates it every day)
  41. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 60%
  42. Trump not impeached (also no Trump resignation): 95%

Postlibertarian

  1. Postlibertarian.com to have >15 more blog posts by July 1, 2017: 80%
  2. Postlibertarian.com to have >30 blog posts by end of year: 70%
  3. Postlibertarian.com to have fewer hits than last year (no election): 60%
  4. Postlibertarian Twitter account to have <300 followers: 90%
  5. Postlibertarian Twitter account to have >270 followers: 60%
  6. Postlibertarian Subreddit to have <100 subscribers: 90%

I missed all the ones I marked as 50% confident, but I’ve realized this category conveys no mathematical information. I could have also listed the predictions as simultaneously saying that there was a 50% chance the exact opposite of the statement occurred, so actually, I got exactly half of them right, and I will always get exactly half of them right. This makes the category completely useless, and so I have decided to avoid posting any predictions of exactly 50% accuracy for next year.

In the other categories:

  • Of items I marked as 60% confident, 10 were correct out of 13.
  • Of items I marked as 70% confident, 5 were correct out of 7.
  • Of items I marked as 80% confident, 9 were correct out of 12.
  • Of items I marked as 90% confident, 7 were correct out of 9.
  • Of items I marked as 95% confident, 2 were correct out of 3.
  • Of items I marked as 99% confident, 4 were correct out of 4.

This may not look great, but is better than last year. Additionally, the big problem is the 95% predictions, which was severely hurt by my poor decision to make predictions about the Bitcoin hard fork, an event which hadn’t really happened before. Ignoring those predictions made in July would change my scores to:

  • Of items I marked as 60% confident, 10 were correct out of 13.
  • Of items I marked as 70% confident, 4 were correct out of 6.
  • Of items I marked as 80% confident, 8 were correct out of 11.
  • Of items I marked as 90% confident, 6 were correct out of 7.
  • Of items I marked as 95% confident, 2 were correct out of 2.
  • Of items I marked as 99% confident, 4 were correct out of 4.

That’s actually remarkably well, with perhaps some 60% predictions that needed more confidence. Moreover, it’s clear I had no business making predictions about Bitcoin with such high confidence, nor did anyone this year. I will definitely be dialing back my confidence levels in Bitcoin price predictions next year, and I’ve focused a bit more of whether Drivechain will be adopted.

Predictions for 2018:

World Events

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95%
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90%
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 80%
  4. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
  5. No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95%
  6. The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
  7. No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
  8. North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95%
  9. North Korea will conduct a nuclear test this year: 70%
  10. North Korea will conduct a missile test this year: 95%
  11. Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70%
  12. S&P 500 2018 >10% growth: 60%
  13. S&P 500 will be between 2500 and 3200: 80% (80% confidence interval)
  14. Unemployment rate December 2018 < 6%: 80%
  15. Unemployment rate December 2018 < 5%: 60%
  16. WTI Crude Oil price up by 10%: 60%
  17. Price of Bitcoin > $10,000: 70%
  18. Price of Bitcoin < $30,000: 60%
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $100,000: 70%
  20. Lightning Network available (I can complete a transaction on LN): 80%
  21. Drivechain development “complete”: 70%
  22. Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 70%
  23. No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 95%
  24. US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 90%
  25. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95%
  26. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  27. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 95%
  28. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
  29. Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2018: 95%
  30. SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will attempt to launch this year (can fail on launch): 95%
  31. SpaceX will not bring humans to low earth orbit: 60%
  32. No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
  33. Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99%
  34. Border wall construction not complete by end of 2018: 99%
  35. Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
  36. No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90%
  37. US National Debt to increase by more than 2017 increase (~$500B): 70%
  38. Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%
  39. Some tariffs raised: 90%
  40. The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 70%
  41. Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 70%
  42. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90%
  43. Mexican government does not pay for wall 99%
  44. Trump not removed from office (also no Trump resignation): 95%
  45. Democrats do not win control of Senate: 60%
  46. Democrats win control of House: 60%

Postlibertarian

  1. postlibertarian.com to have 10 new posts by July 1, 2018: 80%
  2. postlibertarian.com to have 20 new posts this year: 80%
  3. Postlibertarian to have more hits than last year: 70%

 

*I modified prediction #31 on January 24th from 70% positive to 60% negative. This feels early enough that I can still call it a prediction, and I’m not sure why I was so confident in December when I wrote these.


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Bitcoin Hard Fork Predictions

Tomorrow there is scheduled to be a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain and network. There’s a fair amount of uncertainty over what will happen. The hashrate is unknowable until the fork occurs. The price seems to be around 10% of the price of Bitcoin. However, there aren’t too many exchanges that will be accepting this currency, and there are even fewer places you can actually spend it.

I’m going to make some predictions about it to put on record what I think is going to occur and to see how correct or incorrect I end up being.

  1. There will be a Bitcoin Cash block mined before 12 AM August 2, US Eastern time: 80%
  2. The price of Bitcoin Cash at 12 AM August 2, US Eastern time will be <10% of Bitcoin’s price: 70%
  3. The price of Bitcoin Cash on August 5 will be < 10% of Bitcoin’s price: 90%
  4. The price of Bitcoin Cash on September 1 will be < 10% of Bitcoin’s price: 90%
  5. The value of all transactions of Bitcoin Cash around September 1 (maybe averaged over a week?) will be < 10% of the value of all transactions in Bitcoin: 95%

I have mixed hopes for the success of Bitcoin Cash. On the one hand, I wrote previously that if the two factions in Bitcoin split, we could have a competitive market showing which rules were better. However, due to network effects, I still don’t think it could happen and be very successful. Supposing it did succeed though (had a pretty high market price), what would that mean? I suppose it would mean forks would become more common. That might be better for competition, but not for stability of the currency.

Ultimately, the idea that it would be fairly easy to make a successful hard fork of Bitcoin would be pretty devastating to Bitcoin’s health. It would mean consensus doesn’t mean much, it would mean the Bitcoin community could splinter pretty easily, which would therefore mean Bitcoin’s usefulness as a currency decreases as each part of the community would be using their own forked blockchain and coin. Something like sidechains seems like a much better implementation of this idea.

I should probably also disclose that I do not have much faith in the current governance model of Bitcoin Cash, and that does concern me a bit as well. I hope that hasn’t clouded my judgment of the actual technological and economic implications, but only time will tell if my predictions are true.

2017 Predictions

It’s fun to have opinions, and it’s easy to craft a narrative to fit your beliefs. But it’s especially dangerous to look back at events and place them retroactively into your model of the world. You can’t learn anything if you’re only ever looking for evidence that supports you.  However, if you try to use your model of the world to create testable predictions, those predictions can be proven right or wrong, and you can actually learn something. Incorrect predictions can help update our models.

This is, of course, the basis for the scientific method, and generally increasing our understanding of the world. Making predictions is also important for making us more humble; we don’t know everything and so putting our beliefs to the test requires us to reduce our certainty until we’ve researched a subject before making baseless claims.  Confidence levels are an important part of predictions, as they force us to think in the context of value and betting: a 90% confidence level means I would take a $100 bet that required me to put up anything less that $90. Moreover, it’s not just a good idea to make predictions to help increase your knowledge; people who have opinions but refuse to predict things with accompanying confidence levels, and therefore refuse to subject their theories to scrutiny and testability, must be classified as more fraudulent and intellectually dishonest.

First let’s take a look at how I did this past year, and see if my calibration levels were correct. Incorrect predictions are crossed out.

Postlibertarian Specific

  1. Postlibertarian to have >10 additional posts by July 1, 2016:  70%
  2. Postlibertarian Twitter to have more than 240 followers:  70%
  3. Postlibertarian.com to have >10k page loads in 2016: 50% (had 30k according to StatCounter)
  4. The predictions on this page will end up being underconfident: 60%

World Events

  1. Liberland will be recognized by <5 UN members: 99% (recognized by 0)
  2. Free State Project to reach goal of 20,000 people in 2016: 50% (occurred February 3rd)
  3. ISIS to still exist: 80%
  4. ISIS to kill < 100 Americans 2016: 80% (I think <100 were killed by any terrorists, fewer in combat)
  5. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 80%
  6. No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 80% (50 did die in the Orlando shooting unfortunately)
  7. Donald Trump will not be Republican Nominee: 80% (whoops)
  8. Hillary Clinton to be Democratic nominee: 90%
  9. Republicans to hold Senate: 60%
  10. Republicans to hold House: 80%
  11. Republicans to win Presidential Election: 50% (I predicted in December, Nate Silver had Trump at 35% the day of, who’s a genius now??)
  12. I will vote for the Libertarian Presidential Candidate: 70% *
  13. S&P 500 level end of year < 2500: 70%
  14. Unemployment rate December 2016 < 6% : 70%
  15. WTI Crude Oil price < $50 : 80%
  16. Price of Bitcoin > $500:  60%
  17. Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 80%
  18. Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
  19. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  20. I will not be able to rent trips on self-driving cars from Uber/ Lyft: 90% **
  21. Humans will not land on moon by end of 2016: 95%
  22. Edward Snowden will not be pardoned by end of Obama Administration: 80% ***

*I didn’t personally vote for the libertarian candidate, but I did trade my vote, resulting in Gary Johnson getting two votes more than he would have had I not voted at all. I’m counting this as at least a vote for Johnson.

**Technically, I am not particularly able to get a ride on a self-driving Uber because I don’t live in Pittsburgh, but I don’t think that’s what I meant. I also didn’t expect any self-driving Uber rides to be available anywhere, so I’m counting it against me.

***Obama still has a few weeks to pardon Snowden, but it’s not looking good

So let’s take a look at how I did by category:

  • Of items I marked as 50% confident, 3 were right and 0 were wrong.
  • Of items I marked as 60% confident, 3 were right and 0 were wrong.
  • Of items I marked as 70% confident, 4 were right and 1 was wrong.
  • Of items I marked as 80% confident, 7 were right and 2 were wrong.
  • Of items I marked as 90% confident, 1 was right and 1 was wrong.
  • Of items I marked as 95% confident, 1 was right and 0 were wrong.
  • Of items I marked as 99% confident, 3 were right and 0 were wrong.

As you can see from this data graphed, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to predictions.

You’re supposed to be as close to the perfect calibration line as possible. The big problems are that I only had 2 or 3 predictions for the 50%, 60%, and 90% confidence intervals. For example, my slip-up on predicting Uber wouldn’t have self-driving cars this year means I was only 1 for 2 on 90% predictions. Clearly I need to find more things to predict, as I had 5 and 9 predictions for the 70% and 80% confidence levels, which were right about on the mark. Luckily for next year, I have almost double the number of predictions:

Predictions for 2017:

World Events

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of June <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 80%
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
  4. Trump 2017 Average Approval Rating (Gallup) <50%: 70%
  5. ISIS to still exist as a fighting force in Palmyra, Mosul, or Al-Raqqah: 60%
  6. ISIS to kill < 100 Americans: 80%
  7. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
  8. No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 90%
  9. France will not vote to leave to the EU: 80%
  10. The UK will trigger Article 50 this year: 70%
  11. The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
  12. No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
  13. S&P 500 2016 >10% growth: 60%
  14. S&P 500 will be between 2000 and 2850: 80% (80% confidence interval)
  15. Unemployment rate December 2017 < 6% : 70%
  16. WTI Crude Oil price > $60 : 70%
  17. Price of Bitcoin > $750: 60%
  18. Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 50%
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $2000: 80%
  20. There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $1B: 80%
  21. There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $500M: 50%
  22. Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
  23. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 90%
  24. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  25. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 80%
  26. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
  27. Humans will not land on moon by end of 2017: 95%
  28. SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 50%
  29. SpaceX successfully launches a reused rocket: 60%
  30. No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
  31. Actual wall on Mexican border not built: 99%
  32. Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
  33. Corporate Tax Rate will be cut to 20% or below: 50%
  34. Obamacare (at least mandate, community pricing, pre-existing conditions) not reversed: 80%
  35. Budget deficit will increase: 90%
  36. Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%
  37. Some tariffs raised: 90%
  38. The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 60%
  39. Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 60%
  40. At least one instance where the executive branch violates a citable civil liberties court case: 70%
  41. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 60%
  42. Trump not impeached (also no Trump resignation): 95%

Postlibertarian

  1. Postlibertarian.com to have >15 more blog posts by July 1, 2017: 80%
  2. Postlibertarian.com to have >30 blog posts by end of year: 70%
  3. Postlibertarian.com to have fewer hits than last year (no election): 60%
  4. Postlibertarian Twitter account to have <300 followers: 90%
  5. Postlibertarian Twitter account to have >270 followers: 60%
  6. Postlibertarian Subreddit to have <100 subscribers: 90%

 


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2016 Predictions

How confident should we be? People tend to be overconfident.  One way to figure out if our confidence levels are correct is to test our calibration levels by making predictions and seeing how many of them pan out. Inspired by Slate Star Codex’s predictions, here are my predictions and accompanying confidence levels. For the sake of convenience I will choose from confidence levels of 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95% or 99%. All predictions are by December 31, 2016 unless noted otherwise.

Postlibertarian Specific

  1. Postlibertarian to have >10 additional posts by July 1, 2016:  70%
  2. Postlibertarian Twitter to have more than 240 followers:  70%
  3. Postlibertarian.com to have >10k page loads in 2016: 50%
  4. The predictions on this page will end up being underconfident: 60%

World Events

  1. Liberland will be recognized by <5 UN members: 99%
  2. Free State Project to reach 20,000 person goal in 2016: 50%
  3. ISIS to still exist: 80%
  4. ISIS to kill < 100 Americans 2016: 80%
  5. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 80%
  6. No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 80%
  7. Donald Trump will not be Republican Nominee: 80%
  8. Hillary Clinton to be Democratic Nominee: 90%
  9. Republicans to hold Senate: 60%
  10. Republicans to hold House: 80%
  11. Republicans to win Presidential Election: 50%
  12. I will vote for the Libertarian Presidential Candidate: 70%
  13. S&P 500 level end of year < 2500: 70%
  14. Unemployment rate December 2016 < 6% : 70%
  15. WTI Crude Oil price < $50 : 80%
  16. Price of Bitcoin > $500:  60%
  17. Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 80%
  18. Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
  19. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  20. Customers will not be able to rent trips on self-driving cars from Uber/ Lyft: 90%
  21. Humans will not land on moon by end of 2016: 95%
  22. Edward Snowden will not be pardoned by end of Obama Administration: 80%