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The "base rate" argument is a rather odd one to make. The base rate of war was hasn't changed much from 2022, that didn't stop Ukraine from happening. Neither d

The "base rate" argument is a rather odd one to make. The base rate of war was hasn't changed much from 2022, that didn't stop Ukraine from happening. Neither did it stop people from calling it. (It certainly didn't stop Samotsvety, who made that call correctly as well) And given that each year sees ~50[1] new armed conflicts (for a total of 195 countries total) I'd posit that the base rate significantly exceeds their estimate of 22%. Yes, of course, a war between China & Taiwan is not just like any war, and there are significant characteristics that influence the likelihood that aren't present in other wars, but at that point, talking of a base rate is just misleading. And when you then "average" the "base rate" of hand picked special cases like "how often did control of Taiwan change", you're waving your hands. Wildly. Which means the point isn't the idea of base rates per se, but choosing the right base rates - or answering the question "what is relevant here", and then analyzing from there. The other success factor for forecasting orgs is choosing what you forecast. As such, I have questions about the actual forecasts made being locked behind a paywall: https://samotsvety.org/track-record/ https://samotsvety.org/track-record/ (It doesn't mean they're not good at forecasting, but it's hard to judge how good) [1] https://ourworldindata.org/conflict-measures-how-do-researchers-measure-how-common-and-deadly-armed-conflicts-are https://ourworldindata.org/conflict-measures-how-do-research...

gs17 3y ago
It really is silly. > One was the rate at which provinces claimed by China (like Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) have eventually been absorbed, peacefully or by force; another was how often control of Taiwan has changed over the last few hundred years (twice; once when Japan took over from the Qing Empire in 1895 and once when the Chinese Nationalists did in 1945); the third base rate used Laplace’s rule. Laplace’s rule states that the probability of something that hasn’t happened before happening is 1 divided by N+2, where N is the number of times it hasn’t happened in the past. So the odds of the People’s Republic of China invading Taiwan this year is 1 divided by 75 (the number of years since 1949 when this has not happened) plus 2, or 1/77, or 1.3 percent. The first rate is maybe since 1949 (or maybe 1841 or 1557?), the second is over an arbitrary number of centuries, and the last is also since 1949, but could be calculated wildly differently if rephrased as "years mainland Chinese government has control over Taiwan" and extended back to the Qing dynasty. Somehow these are compatible to do an average of. Then "He nudged up to 12 percent." Not that estimated percent chances can ever really be "wrong".
mike_hearn 3y ago
It seems sensible enough. It's not being presented as the One Weird Trick that lets you see the future, just as something simple and obvious that (implication: bizarrely) other people who try to predict the future often don't do. So even by just doing very basic things like that, you can end up ahead. Not right, not even most of the time, just more right than other people. We might think that this seems rather obvious, and that's probably true. Samotsvety are being compared to people like IC analysts, politicians and pundits. Not people exactly famous for their firm commitment to rationalism and accountability. If you compared their track record vs top hedge funds it might look a little different, but of course hedge funds don't try to estimate the probabilities of things like a nuke hitting London.

gs17 3y ago

It really is silly. > One was the rate at which provinces claimed by China (like Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) have eventually been absorbed, peacefully or by force; another was how often control of Taiwan has changed over the last few hundred years (twice; once when Japan took over from the Qing Empire in 1895 and once when the Chinese Nationalists did in 1945); the third base rate used Laplace’s rule. Laplace’s rule states that the probability of something that hasn’t happened before happening is 1 divided by N+2, where N is the number of times it hasn’t happened in the past. So the odds of the People’s Republic of China invading Taiwan this year is 1 divided by 75 (the number of years since 1949 when this has not happened) plus 2, or 1/77, or 1.3 percent. The first rate is maybe since 1949 (or maybe 1841 or 1557?), the second is over an arbitrary number of centuries, and the last is also since 1949, but could be calculated wildly differently if rephrased as "years mainland Chinese government has control over Taiwan" and extended back to the Qing dynasty. Somehow these are compatible to do an average of. Then "He nudged up to 12 percent." Not that estimated percent chances can ever really be "wrong".

mike_hearn 3y ago

It seems sensible enough. It's not being presented as the One Weird Trick that lets you see the future, just as something simple and obvious that (implication: bizarrely) other people who try to predict the future often don't do. So even by just doing very basic things like that, you can end up ahead. Not right, not even most of the time, just more right than other people. We might think that this seems rather obvious, and that's probably true. Samotsvety are being compared to people like IC analysts, politicians and pundits. Not people exactly famous for their firm commitment to rationalism and accountability. If you compared their track record vs top hedge funds it might look a little different, but of course hedge funds don't try to estimate the probabilities of things like a nuke hitting London.