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Folamh3  1yr ago (slatestarcodex.com)   3192 thread views

Five More Years | Slate Star Codex

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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.

  1. Bioengineering project kills at least five people: 20%
  1. …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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Roe v. Wade substantially overturned: 1%

fits pretty nicely with

At least one prediction here is horrendously wrong at the “only a market for five computers” level: 95%

But if COVID was the result of gain-of-function research (which seems to me pretty likely), then yeah, maybe it's the bioengineering one.

I don't think anybody, even pro-lifers, really expected any change on Roe vs Wade. "Republicans run on doing something about it; Democrats run on 'Republicans are gonna do something about it'; nobody does anything about it no matter who wins" is how it went for the recent past. That we got the Trump Supreme Court and they did do something about it when he was out of office was a big surprise to everyone.

I certainly didn't expect it. I thought it's a bad decision (original RvW, not the reversal), but I didn't think SCOTUS would dare to revert it. I underestimated them. Since I am by nature rather skeptical and pessimistic, being wrong in that direction once in a while makes me actually feel better.

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