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Notes -
In concert with the other top-level discussions of betting, how about a topic which will definitely be uncontroversial:
Will Trump survive his full term?
No, I’m not talking about assassination. Curve-fitting the 4/45 former Presidents killed in office, the 4/59 terms ended by assassins, or the 4/236 years with assassinations? That’s a fool’s errand. It’s time for actuarial tables.
The President is 78 years and 7 months old. This gives a baseline 5-6% chance of death for the year, climbing towards 8% when he leaves office. He’d have a cumulative chance of death, during that period, of about 24%.
But Trump is not in the same position as the average American. He’s overweight or slightly obese, giving him a higher share of the risk for heart disease and stroke. He’s not a smoker, reducing various cardiovascular and cancer risk factors. He doesn’t drink, which further reduces his cancer and stroke risk but somehow raises his overall risk. Some of these factors, like cancer, are going to be mitigated by the planet’s best medical care. (You’d better believe that Trump is getting the best colonoscopy. The biggest.) Others are harder to screen or treat. I have no idea how to assess them holistically, and further data are welcome.
Still. 24% chance that this Presidency ends with conspiracy theories about stroke guns.
I'm still waiting for the mea culpas for all the people on this very forum who said that Trump was old and demented like Biden. (If you were one of those people, it might be worth considering how you arrived at that conclusion.)
In any case, I wouldn't rely on actuarial calculators. People who are near death often look and act like it. Obviously the odds of Trump kicking over from a coronary event are non-zero, but the calculators are a crude estimate and crucially include people who are already dying of diabetes, cancer, etc.. The 6% of 78 year olds who die every year include a lot of people who are already on their death bed or have terminal cancer, etc... The death rate for a healthy individual is much, much lower. Plus, Trump is almost certainly on statins.
So 24% is a naive and bad estimate. My guess is that we could train an AI to do a much better job than antique calculators just by watching a video of someone speaking for a couple minutes.
I'd give equal odds to him being assassinated as to dying from natural causes, say roughly 8% each.
Those seem like pretty plausible numbers. I agree that he’s definitely not in the bottom 6% of health. He’s not even close on weight; he’s like 60th, 70th percentile. So not the highest risk for cardiovascular. And I expect screening to rule out all sorts of possible stealth risks.
I wonder what the actuarial tables look like for sudden death. I don’t know how I’d search for that.
Assassination risk is a whole different ball game. He’s probably more hated that any president since…Nixon? But that’s only loosely coupled with actual assasssination attempts. It’s also not a good predictor of defensive measures. Makes me a little curious if the government cuts involve cleaning house for the Secret Service…
I would sincerely hope so. It keeps getting glossed over in these discussions, but I still haven't seen anything remotely like an adequate explanation of the events surrounding the Butler assassination attempt, and barring some extremely rigorous explanations or an ironclad paper trail detailing how the Secret Service has been an elaborate bluff all along, "the secret service intentionally attempted to allow an assassination of a presidential candidate" seems to me the the most likely explanation.
Humans make errors. Occam's razor is our friend here--no need to go the conspiratorial route when evidence doesn't exist for it.
I'm still waiting. The evidence as I understand it is that the Secret Service sniper had the assassin in his sights and not only allowed him to fire multiple shots, but only fired after a non-sniper engaged the assassin and disabled his rifle.
That is because that building was supposed to be under the care of the local police, it was actually their headquarters.
It was not clear who that person was until shots were fired. And communications were sorted out.
Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity/ineptitude.
That's terrible advice when there's lots of malice around (like there is now).
Ok then make the case, with evidence, of why it was some sort of malicious conspiracy.
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