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
- Postlibertarian to have >10 additional posts by July 1, 2016: 70%
Postlibertarian Twitter to have more than 240 followers: 70%- Postlibertarian.com to have >10k page loads in 2016: 50% (had 30k according to StatCounter)
- The predictions on this page will end up being underconfident: 60%
World Events
- Liberland will be recognized by <5 UN members: 99% (recognized by 0)
- Free State Project to reach goal of 20,000 people in 2016: 50% (occurred February 3rd)
- ISIS to still exist: 80%
- ISIS to kill < 100 Americans 2016: 80% (I think <100 were killed by any terrorists, fewer in combat)
- US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 80%
- No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 80% (50 did die in the Orlando shooting unfortunately)
Donald Trump will not be Republican Nominee:80% (whoops)- Hillary Clinton to be Democratic nominee: 90%
- Republicans to hold Senate: 60%
- Republicans to hold House: 80%
- Republicans to win Presidential Election: 50% (I predicted in December, Nate Silver had Trump at 35% the day of, who’s a genius now??)
- I will vote for the Libertarian Presidential Candidate: 70% *
- S&P 500 level end of year < 2500: 70%
- Unemployment rate December 2016 < 6% : 70%
WTI Crude Oil price < $50 :80%- Price of Bitcoin > $500: 60%
- Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 80%
- Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
- Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
I will not be able to rent trips on self-driving cars from Uber/ Lyft:90% **- Humans will not land on moon by end of 2016: 95%
- 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
- Trump Approval Rating end of June <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
- Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 80%
- Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
- Trump 2017 Average Approval Rating (Gallup) <50%: 70%
- ISIS to still exist as a fighting force in Palmyra, Mosul, or Al-Raqqah: 60%
- ISIS to kill < 100 Americans: 80%
- US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
- No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 90%
- France will not vote to leave to the EU: 80%
- The UK will trigger Article 50 this year: 70%
- The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
- No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
- S&P 500 2016 >10% growth: 60%
- S&P 500 will be between 2000 and 2850: 80% (80% confidence interval)
- Unemployment rate December 2017 < 6% : 70%
- WTI Crude Oil price > $60 : 70%
- Price of Bitcoin > $750: 60%
- Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 50%
- Price of Bitcoin < $2000: 80%
- There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $1B: 80%
- There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $500M: 50%
- Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
- Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 90%
- Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
- I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 80%
- 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%
- Humans will not land on moon by end of 2017: 95%
- SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 50%
- SpaceX successfully launches a reused rocket: 60%
- No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
- Actual wall on Mexican border not built: 99%
- Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
- Corporate Tax Rate will be cut to 20% or below: 50%
- Obamacare (at least mandate, community pricing, pre-existing conditions) not reversed: 80%
- Budget deficit will increase: 90%
- Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%
- Some tariffs raised: 90%
- The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 60%
- Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 60%
- At least one instance where the executive branch violates a citable civil liberties court case: 70%
- Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 60%
- Trump not impeached (also no Trump resignation): 95%
Postlibertarian
- Postlibertarian.com to have >15 more blog posts by July 1, 2017: 80%
- Postlibertarian.com to have >30 blog posts by end of year: 70%
- Postlibertarian.com to have fewer hits than last year (no election): 60%
- Postlibertarian Twitter account to have <300 followers: 90%
- Postlibertarian Twitter account to have >270 followers: 60%
- Postlibertarian Subreddit to have <100 subscribers: 90%
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