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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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In what’s becoming an annual ritual, I’m putting together a list of predictions for the year to come to share with some like-minded friends, mostly for fun and discussion. They’re still a work-in-progress, mostly cobbled together yesterday on the toilet, so I’m keen to tweak them. Format is straightforward.

<5% chances

Four things that you are extremely confident will not happen, the less obvious the better (no points for “the sun goes supernova”). To get top score, none of these should happen.

(1) Chinese invasion or full-scale blockade of Taiwan.

(2) Domestic terror attack in Western country killing >500 people

(3) Major housing price collapse (>25% YOY fall) in any G7 economy

(4) Nuclear weapons used outside Ukraine

~25% chances

Four things that you think are fairly unlikely to happen in 2023. For perfect calibration, exactly one of these should happen.

(5) At least one nuclear weapon used in Ukraine.

(6) Trump declares he will not/cannot run in the 2024 election.

(7) New serious COVID variant triggers new serious round of pandemic (more than 30 days of national lockdowns in UK)

(8) Average OPEC oil price for 2023 >$110

50% chances

Here I’m shooting for 2/4 to come true.

(9) BTC price recovers to at least $25k within first six months of 2023.

(10) Twitter announces bankruptcy.

(11) Western-made jets supplied to Ukraine

(12) Erdogan to win June 2023 Turkish national elections

75% chances

Shooting for 3/4.

(13) No new UK General Election.

(14) Vladimir Putin still President of Russia.

(15) A free Open Source LLM available by December 2023 with equivalent functionality to ChatGPT and no hard content restrictions.

(16) UK economy experiences net negative growth in 2023

>95% chances

Shooting for 4/4 here, but again, less credit for extremely obvious stuff.

(17) Joe Biden still President of USA at end of 2023

(18) SCOTUS overturns Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

(19) Xi Jinping remains Chairman of Communist Party

(20) SpaceX has first successful orbital flight of Starship.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

no points for “the sun goes supernova”

Well,* you're* no fun! 😁☀💥