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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!
Not going to happen. China is building its military at an incredible rate, western militaries havent ramped up their anti China programs such as B21 and are in an awkward position maintaining cold war era tech, dismantling the low end war legacy in the middle east and trying to start new programs. The amount of munitions going to Ukraine is astounding. It is better for China to push a potential war well into the future. This includes their domestic market. They are building new nuclear power, trying to build their own supply chains etc. A war in 2023 would be horribly premature.
This isn't that dramatic and probably more likely.
The threshold for nukes is very high and i is unlikely that they would be used outside an all out war between NATO and China/Russia.
More likely MIGs supplied by someone else. Building an Airforce of Gripens/F16s is a big job.
The death rate for people at his age is roughly 5%. That doesnt count people becoming vegetables after a stroke. The chances of him not making it through the year are more like 10%.
We overestimate what will happen in the next 3 years and underestimate what will happen in 10-30 years. A year in a massive rocket program is nothing, these projects easily stretch well over a decade. Spacex is fast but falcon 1/9 were not speedy programs. If they are in commercial service 2027 it would be fast. Their rocket is incredibly ambitious and test-cycles will be long as a new rocket is expensive and slow to replace. I give them a 40% chance of reaching orbit next year and I would be mightily impressed by their speed if they succeed in 2024.
Agree. People seem to systematically overestimate the likelihood of escalation of geopolitical events.
To be clear, in my original prediction, this was listed at <5% (ie not going to happen this year)
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