On this day five years ago, Scott made a list of graded predictions for how the next five years would pan out. How did he do?
He correctly predicted that Democrats would win the presidency in 2020. He correctly predicted that the UK would leave the EU and that no other country would vote to leave. He seemed under the impression that Ted Cruz would rise up to take Trump's mantle, but to my mind the only person in the Republican party who has a meaningful chance of opposing Trump is DeSantis. I think a lot of the technological predictions were too optimistic (specifically the bits about space travel and self-driving vehicles) but I don't work in tech and amn't really qualified to comment.
Near the end of the article, in a self-deprecating moment, he predicts with 80% confidence that "Whatever the most important trend of the next five years is, I totally miss it". To my mind, the most significant "trend" (or "event") of the last five years was Covid, and I think he actually did okay on this front: the second-last section of the article is a section on global existential risks:
Global existential risks will hopefully not be a big part of the 2018-2023 period. If they are, it will be because somebody did something incredibly stupid or awful with infectious diseases. Even a small scare with this will provoke a massive response, which will be implemented in a panic and with all the finesse of post-9/11 America determining airport security.
- Bioengineering project kills at least five people: 20%
- …at least five thousand people: 5%
Whether you think those two predictions cames to pass naturally depends where you sit on the lab leak hypothesis.
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Notes -
Nice post but I protest the use of “amn’t”. Yes I see why it makes sense but I still hate coming across it. I acknowledge you may discard this opinion.
Contraction of "am not". What's the issue
Probably just because I'm is the usual contraction, this is a special case where you can drop the second I that would have gobbled up that am - I'm not positive on whether it's even grammatically correct.
fully written out the whole statement would be
Using both tricks at once to produce "amn't" just strikes me as strange, It implies the existence of a I'mn't which is truly an abomination.
Just guessing, but it's probably not grammatical in English because a lot of how English is spoken in Ireland is down to imported Irish grammer.
'I'm not' can be one word in Irish (níl mé/nílim), so 'amn't' probably sounded natural when English was becoming the dominant language.
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