My gut feeling is, that this is excessive. Seems to be a sane reaction though, if you agree with Metaculus on the 3% chance of Putin attacking the Baltics.
Do you agree that there is a 3% chance of a Russia-NATO conflict? Is Metaculus well enough calibrated, that they can tell a 3% chance from a 0,3% chance?
On one hand, It seems quite plausible for forecasts like this to usually be underconfident about the likelihood of the null event, but on the other hand recent events should probably have substantially increased forecasters’ entropy for questions around geopolitical events in the next few days and weeks.
To me it seems that potential nuclear war is a lot more concerning than proximal country invasion as it would escalate much more slowly.
While it might be excessive I’m more worried about status-quo bias. Most of us haven’t experienced a serious war and will be overly focused on how good and safe things seem now plus the highly inconvenient short-term personal implications.
What do you put P(nukes used | Russia-NATO conflict)? Intuitively it seems high to me. There hasn’t been a direct conflict between them yet; basically down to MAD.
My gut feeling is, that this is excessive. Seems to be a sane reaction though, if you agree with Metaculus on the 3% chance of Putin attacking the Baltics.
Do you agree that there is a 3% chance of a Russia-NATO conflict? Is Metaculus well enough calibrated, that they can tell a 3% chance from a 0,3% chance?
Miscalibration might cut both ways…
On one hand, It seems quite plausible for forecasts like this to usually be underconfident about the likelihood of the null event, but on the other hand recent events should probably have substantially increased forecasters’ entropy for questions around geopolitical events in the next few days and weeks.
To me it seems that potential nuclear war is a lot more concerning than proximal country invasion as it would escalate much more slowly.
While it might be excessive I’m more worried about status-quo bias. Most of us haven’t experienced a serious war and will be overly focused on how good and safe things seem now plus the highly inconvenient short-term personal implications.
What do you put P(nukes used | Russia-NATO conflict)? Intuitively it seems high to me. There hasn’t been a direct conflict between them yet; basically down to MAD.
Metaculus is (as of posting this comment) on 5% for Nuclear Detonation Fatality By 2024 .
Why was this prediction removed?
You have to sign-up for the nuclear risk tournament to see it (which doesn’t come with any commitments to participate afaict).
https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/nuclear-risk-forecasting-tournament/
Moreover, Metaculus is currently on 10% for >100 nuclear detonations given one fatality by 2024. Seems about right.
a bit of an underestimate.