Philip Tetlock’s studies of “forecasting” have led him to conclude that forecasting talent is very unevenly distributed. Most people are not great at predicting future events, but the top fraction of forecasters can outperform even subject matter experts in some circumstances. He calls these people “superforecasters,” and he and his colleagues at the Forecasting Research Institute are trying to use their skills to help give concrete guidance about crucial, hard-to-predict topics.
Case in point: Tetlock, economist Ezra Karger, Forecasting Research Institute CEO Josh Rosenberg, and seven co-authors just released the results of their Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament, which was meant to “produce high-quality forecasts of the risks facing humanity over the next century.” To do this, they asked subject matter experts who study threats that at least conceivably could jeopardize humanity’s survival (like nuclear weapons, pandemics, climate change, and rogue artificial intelligence), but they also asked superforecasters who’ve proven accurate at predicting events in the past. The superforecaster group is not made up of experts on existential threats to humanity, but rather generalists from a variety of occupations with solid predictive track records.
The median expert put 6 percent odds that humans will go extinct by 2100; they estimated 20 percent odds of a catastrophic event before the year 2100 that kills off at least 10 percent of the human population within a five year period. (To put into perspective just how catastrophic such a catastrophic event would be, World War II resulted in the deaths of less than 4 percent of the global population at the time.) The superforecasters, by contrast, are more optimistic, putting a 9 percent chance of catastrophe and a 1 percent chance of extinction.
But there are good reasons to be skeptical that these methods can tell us much about the world in 2030 — let alone for the 70 years beyond.
For one thing, the superforecasters used in this study are a “set of forecasters with high levels of accuracy on short-run (0-2 year timespan) resolvable questions.” That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good at soothsaying far into the future. “It is an open question,” the authors concede, “whether forecasters who are accurate on short-run questions will also be accurate on longer-run questions.” What’s more, the group was selected based on tournaments run between 2011 and 2015. Maybe their abilities have degraded? “It is also possible that the epistemic strategies that were successful in 2011-2015, when the superforecasters attained their status, are not as appropriate at other points in time,” the authors concede.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2378 ... orecasters
Superforecaster Probabilities
In the article, you can hover over the bars to get the probabilities.
What is the superforecaster median estimate of the probability that at least 10 percent of humans will be killed within a five-year period, before the year 2100 by:
Nuclear 4.0%
Artificial Intelligence 2.1%
Natural Pandemic 1.0%
Engineered Pandemic 0.9%
The sum of the above is 8%. Since the total given is 9%, it can probably be assumed that there were other causes that added up to about 1%.
Superforecaster Probabilities vs My Probabilities
Next I will break my February 2018 forecast down line by line and discuss the probabilities.
There will be a major global financial panic and crisis.
Probability near 100 percent.
Supply chains will break, resulting in unavailability of critical raw materials and components.
Probability near 100 percent. There hasn't been a major global financial panic and crisis yet, but supply chain problems already started showing up as a result of minor bumps. There have been shortages of semiconductors and related items (autos, smartphones, etc.), medicines, baby formula, and now potatoes. When the real global financial panic and crisis hits, the shortages will get a lot worse, and these shortages will be part of what reduces the population.
Global trade will begin to shut down. As it begins to become apparent that the supply chain linkages are permanently broken, the global interlinked financial markets will shut down and cease to exist. This will all happen very quickly. It will not take years from the initial panic.
Already covered to the extent necessary for this topic.
The focus of governments will turn to controlling their panicked and hungry populations. Due to lack of availability of imported goods and adequate storage "sufficient to reconstitute" a system consistent with nation state government, this will prove to be too little too late and most government will devolve to the local level as populations lose faith in their national governments and the national governments lose the resources and ability to control their populations.
Already covered to the extent necessary for this topic or will be below.
There will be no large scale nuclear war.
This is just to say that the highest probability, highest profile and most feared killer that most people, including the superforecasters (albeit low probability in their opinion), forecast is not in my opinion what is most likely going to reduce the population. That's not to say the probability is zero or that no deaths will result from nuclear. This will be looked at more in future posts.
Instead, the population will be culled through starvation, local strife (including settling of long-standing scores) and disease.
These will be major killers. It will happen because of shortages of things like fertilizers, fuels and medicines and the violence that results from it. As the minor supply chain shortages have foreshadowed these shortages so has the minor violence in France foreshadowed the kind of violence that will be seen when the economy breaks down, and when transfer payments (government assistance of all kinds) are no longer available.
Wave after wave of pandemics will sweep the world.
Similar to covid, but very likely more deadly, this should be a feature of life for the next few decades. I agree with the implied probabilities that the superforecasters gave that they are about equally likely to be of engineered and natural origin, and there will be both, as well as the likelihood that none will likely directly kill more than 10 percent of the world population within a 5 year period. Pandemics will be a significant problem though.
Similar to national economies and governments, centralized utilities will fail or become so decrepit as to be unsafe and unusable. All centralized utilities including the power grid will shut down permanently.
This will be another major killer. Centralized utilities will wind down over time, but as they do the effects from things like contaminated water will be significant, as previously discussed.
The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%.
No further comment.
The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.
No comment necessary for this topic.
Life during the coming dark age will be similar to the last dark age but worse due to environmental damage and pollution.
These things will not be the significant contributors to population reduction, but will make life more brutal and shorter for the next several hundred years. The big wild card is sperm counts.
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.
