Predictions for 2024

ACX Prediction contest, plus some personal things at the end.

Last year I reviewed my predictions for 2022. This year I decided to also do a post about my predictions for 2024 ahead of time, so that I can review what I was thinking at the time. Like last year, I’m limiting myself to a maximum of about five minutes of research per question. I’ll try to come up with my own probabilities, then adjust for Zvi and manifold. For each question I write my estimate at the headline, with the explanation below.

1. Will Bitcoin go up over 2024? 40%

Here’s Bitcoin over the last five years

On the cons side: It’s currently at a historic high (outside of the weird pandemic period). Bitcoin ETFs just got approved, which means it’s enjoying a boost from that, but that’s probably the last major boost it’s going to get (there’s not really anyone left for it to go mainstream to). It seems fairly likely (~60%) that another wave of AI hype or some new thing will drive bitcoin out of the headlines, causing it to decline.

On the pros side: It’s currently about 8% up since the start of the year, which isn’t a lot given the volatility (about 60-90%) but is also not nothing. If we assume it’s a pure gaussian motion (as per EMH), that’s about 54% to stay net positive.

I think I come down on about 30% to be up over the year. Zvi had it at 42% and manifold has it at 65%, so after adjusting for those I think I’ll go up to 40% (Zvi only went up to 42% and I trust him over manifold here).

2. Will the FDA or EMA withdraw approval of semaglutide for the treatment of obesity or diabetes in 2024? 2%

I have no strong inside view here. I don’t remember the FDA withdrawing approvals of drugs much without very clear justification, which suggests it’s rare. A quick web search suggests this happens quite a lot for specific drugs (at least in absolute numbers; I can’t find a good measure of rates). But a full class of drugs seems unlikely, especially one that’s this popular with both pharma companies and consumers. My guess here is under 5%, but fairly low confidence. Zvi and Manifold alst have it at under 5%, so I’ll stick with 2% here since no one’s suggested a good counterargument.

3. Will there be faithless electors in the 2024 US Presidential election? 32%.

Looking at historical data: In the 11 elections between 1948 and 1988, 7 had faithless electors. In the period since, We had faithless electors in 2000, 2004, and 2016, for 3 out of 8 elections. So around 50% is a reasonable prior here.

How do we expect it to change here? On the positive side, Biden’s come under a lot of criticism from the far left, so I can imagine some of them going against him - say around 40%. It’s harder to imagine someone on the right going against Trump, but if Trump isn’t the nominee (which is at 5%) probably some Trump loyalist will vote for him (20% conditional, so about 1% overall).

On the negative side, this is an incredibly polarized election and is very similar to 2020, which also had zero faithless electors. And the left was mad at Biden then too, plus the specter of Trump’s insurrection should push them even harder in the direction of unity.

Overall I think the negatives win out here, so my guess is about 30%. Zvi has this at 50% blind and 38% post Manifold (which has it at 27% pre-Zvi). I think this convinces me to go up to 32%, but not higher.

4. In 2024 will there be any change in the composition of the US Supreme Court? 12%

None of the republican judges will voluntarily retire. There’s an outside chance that Sotomayor (who’ll be 70 this year) retires, especially if it looks like Trump will win the election, but judges are generally reluctant to retire and she’ll probably hope for a democratic president in 2028. Let’s say 4%.

For deaths, Clarence Thomas is 75, so there’s about a 4% annual risk of death per actuarial tables. I haven’t heard much about him having bad health and he has access to good medical care (which should reduce this), but adjusting for race should increase it. Between him and everyone else give it around 5% chance of a death, so we get to around 9% overall.

Zvi had it at around 15% (he actually did the health calculation for everyone, which gets a higher result than me). Manifold is at 14%. I’m going to adjust up to 12% and leave it there.

5. Will there be a bilateral cease-fire or peace agreement in the Russo-Ukraine conflict in 2024? 18%.

On the positive side: The war seems to be winding down as both sides realize they probably can’t take much more land, and there’s rumors of the US pushing Zelensky to try to make a deal. If Trump wins the election, that could change things and make Ukraine much more eager to try to settle.

On the negative side: Both sides seem pretty entrenched and there’s no real reason for a formal ceasefire as opposed to just lower-paced trench warfare, even if the war effectively winds down. There’s rumors of Ukraine running out of men, which could make Russia decide they’re on the verge of a breakthrough. Ceasefire negotiations haven’t even started yet, and could take a while or break down (if they start after the November election, they might not end by the end of the year).

Overall… very weak 40%? I don’t really have a good feel or way to estimate this. Zvi and Manifold both have this at 15%, so given my very weak prior I’ll go all the way down to 18%.

6. Will Benjamin Netanyahu remain Prime Minister of Israel throughout 2024? 74%.

This one I do know more than both Zvi and Manifold about, for a change.

If there’s an election, it seems very unlikely he stays in power afterwards (<20%). On the other hand, Bibi knows this, and cares more about holding onto power than anything else, which is why he’s going to do everything he can to avoid another election. He doesn’t legally have to hold one until 2026, so this only happens if his coalition falls apart.

Will it? He’s held onto power so far, but holding power during the intense period of a war is easy mode. His coalition partners would all lose power in a new election, so they have reason to stick with him, but they’re not historically super rational and may enjoy being back in shouty opposition (especially since the more extreme elements are locked out of the war cabinet anyway). Within his own party, there’s more than a few people who’d like to inherit the party leadership, but they can’t be seen to turn against him by the base if they want that. He can afford up to 4 defections (his coalition has a 64/120 seat majority), so it’d take an actual faction turning against him, a couple of lone defectors wouldn’t do it.

Also, it’d take about three months from an election being called to a new government being sworn in, which means this is effectively a market on a no confidence vote by September.

I give this around 80%. Zvi has it at 25% blind. Manifold has it at 49%. My brother has it at “99.9999%”, which seems a bit overconfident but adjusts me up. I’ll settle at 82%.

7. Will the WHO declare a global health emergency (PHEIC) in 2024? 25%.

Not something I have experience with. They’ve declared five in the last decade and one in the decade before that, so a prior of around 30%, but after covid that should be lower (both because it cost them credibility and because it means people will interpret “global health emergency” more severely). On the other hand they probably liked being important during covid and kinda miss it. Let’s go with 25%. Zvi and Manifold both ended up at 25%, so sticking to that.

8. Will the 2024 light duty electric vehicle sales share exceed 11% in the US through November 2024? 88%.

Going by this table, we’re almost exactly on trend to hit it. Unfortunately the actual numbers don’t seem available, and the exact trend depends heavily on the precise numbers. It looks headed tor about 12%, which would make yes a favourite (say about 60%.

On the other hand this table predicts falling short in 2024 (then exceeding 12% in 2025):

That website seems to be tracking a slightly different metric (or maybe it was just made earlier?) This site suggests 9.84% for 2023 (as opposed to the 7.21% in that graph, which would give us 11.7% if we just add the extra amount (or slightly more if we multiply it).

Actually resolving these discrepancy and getting real numbers would take more work than my self-imposed 5 minute limit, but this is one case where it would actually be helpful. I’ll round to about 80%, mostly because I might be misunderstanding the question. Zvi has it at 85%, for similar considerations. Since he didn’t notice any obvious problems either and Manifold has since jumped up to 84%, I’ll take it as evidence that this framing is correct and jump to 88%.

9. Will OpenAI publish information describing Q* (Q-Star) in 2024? 20%.

I know a lot less about OpenAI politics than most predictors here. In general they seem pretty reluctant to publish details and most models probably don’t work out, so if we assume Q* only became famous by coincidence (being mentioned in a memo right before Sam Altman drama went down), this should be about 8%. Add some probability that it got prominant because it actually is the next big thing, wem ight go up to 10%. Weak confidence here though.

Zvi had this one at 35% on low credence, and manifold has it at 24%. I’m going to stick below the market here but not by much, and bet on 20%.

10. Will an AI win a coding contest on Codeforces in 2024? 5%

Seems highly unlikely without a new breakthrough, and there haven’t really been rumors of one (there’s no GPT 2 of this, at least that I’ve heard - though admittedly I haven’t heard that much). Going to guess a weak 15%.

Zvi had this at 10% and market at 7%. I expect the market to be overly optimistic on things like this, so going down to 5% here.

11. Will Ukraine control central Bakhmut at the end of 2024? 10%

Russia took central Bakhmut in May and has held onto it mostly unchallenged since. Offensives haven’t worked out for Ukraine this year and they seem likely to mostly switch to more defensive war in the future. A complete Russia collapse would probably be required, which seems unlikely. I’ll give this one 10%.

Manifold is at 13%, and Zvi is short that on general principles. This seems consistent with my 10%, so sticking to that.

12. Will the Shanghai (SSE) Composite Index go up over 2024? 49%.

Going to assume the EMH here, except be slightly more positive since I assume risk skews downwards here (due to the possibility of a Chinese stock collapse due to invading Taiwan).

The index is down 3.05% so far this year, so it has to go up at least that for this to settle as yes. Average annualized growth is about 10.7% with around 27% annual volatility. so the expected returns are +7.7% with a variance of 27%, or about +0.28 sdevs. converting to probabilities that’s about 61% of staying positive - let’s round up to 63% due to the downside risk.

Zvi points out that if you look at down years it’s only been up 44% of the time, which suggests historically it’s actually had asymmetric risk in the opposite direction, and that China has policies to make it artificially high. He winds up at 50%. I’m mostly convinced, and the index is down two more points since he wrote it. Manifold is also down since he made his prediction. On the other hand, I should adjust slightly up for my previous calculation. I think I trust Zvi’s short over manifold, so I’ll stick with 49%.

13. Will the New Glenn launch vehicle reach an altitude of 100 kilometers in 2024? 40%.

Apparently this is a blue Origin spacecraft. It’s scheduled for no earlier than Q2 2024 and has been repeatedly delayed, so weak prior for 33%. But mostly going to expect manifold to be overly optimistic here and short whatever they have. Zvi has it at 65% low confidence, Manifold has it at 52%. I’m going to keep my pessimism and round to 40%.

14. Will there be 10 or more armed forces conflict deaths between China and Taiwan in 2024? 10%.

In general I think people underrate the possibility of a full Chinese invasion. The chinese people I know keep telling me that it’s coming (they say they’re personally against it, but in a tone that makes it feel like this is a minority opinion). And between Russia/Ukraine and the middle east, this seems like the ideal opportunity for China.

On the minus side there’s a lot of good reasons to just keep procrastinating on it. It’s objectively a terrible idea, and surely Xi’s inner circle is aware of this. China has enough economic problems as is. And doing it within a year without obvious preparation is hard. If it does happen, it seems at least reasonably likely to take the form of a blockade without open battle instead of a full on invasion, which would probably (~50%) not lead to many deaths.

Overall, let’s say it has 50% to happen within the next 10 years. Of this about 25% of the probability should be for the next year, so I give it 12%. I expect Manifold to rate this too low, but Manifold has a tendency to overvalue tail risks. Manifold is at 10%. 12% seems reasonable based on that. Zvi has it at 4%, but I think he’s overly discounting China’s internal propaganda. I’ll stick to 10% and be done here.

15. Will there be 10 or more armed forces conflict deaths between India and Pakistan in 2024? 21%.

I don’t follow India/Pakistan much. A quick search turns up skirmishes that would have qualified in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2019, for a prior of about 40% over the last decade, or 20% over the last 5 years. The first three incidents are probably related and might be lumpable into one big root incident, which would give us 20% over the last decade too. Let’s say a prior of 24%.

Zvi goes 25 years back for a base rate of 5-6/25, for a base rate of about 20%. He claims this has declined over time and rounds down, but this seems false (the last 5 year and 10 year window both have 20% or higher rates). Manifold is trading at 16% and I do expect it to be more informed than me here, so adjusting down for that. Let’s end up at around 21%.

16. Will a nuclear weapon detonation kill at least 10 people in 2024? 1%.

How could this happen? India-Pakistan escalation seems most likely, but still putting it at around 1%. Israel-Iran is also possible, especially if Iran gets nuclear weapons and Israel needs to do a first strike, but the political situation makes it unlikely (Bibi has the most to gain from instability but he’s very averse to actually doing things and the US is trying to push Israel to deescalate), so also under 1%. China-Taiwan leading to a US-China nuclear war is also possible if China kills american troops, but also unlikely.

Overall I can’t see this as above 1%. Zvi has this at 3%, but doesn’t list any cases that I think rise to significant probability. Sticking at 1%.

17. Will there be 100 or more military conflict deaths between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2024? 18%.

Ethiopia and Eritrea seem to have had their last war in 2000, for about a 4% chance of war over the last 25 years. There was also the 2020-2022 Tigray war, but I can’t tell if that would qualify as being between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Overall this seems like a slightly more tense situation than India/Pakistan (and without the MAD aspect since they’re not nuclear armed), but the required number of deaths here is higher. so let’s say a very weak 15%.

Zvi had this at around 20%, and Manifold has it at 19% now. I’m going to mostly trust Manifold and jump to 18%.

18. Will Mike Johnson remain Speaker for all of 2024? 79%.

Republicans have replaced three house speakers since 2010, during which they controlled the house for 10 out of 13 years, so a prior of about 30% of replacement. We should adjust up for their increasingly weak majority and more fractured coalition, and down for, well, they had such a hard time even getting this speaker in place, they might not be suicidal enough to do a whole new speaker fight. And this is a presidential election year, so they might not want infighting distracting from attacks on Biden. Let’s say 23% to replace him, so about 77% that he stays. Zvi has this at 80%, which is mostly consistent and doesn’t raise any new ways for this to happen, so settling at 79%.

19. Which party will win the 2024 US presidential election? 50/50.

At this point, I’m going with 60% Republican. Most of the news headwinds seem likely to favour Biden (Economy is likely to improve, inflation is down, Trump’s legal troubles probably help him in the primary but hurt in the general and he’s increasingly unhinged, which may become more visible close to the election). On the other hand, Biden is doing very badly in the polls and the internet is too dismissive of this. Just going with the polls historically beats trying to figure things out by hand.

Zvi gives Democrats a 60% chance. Predictit gives Democrats 52% and historically has a republican bias. Given this, I’ll adjust myself down to 50/50. I don’t think I can reasonably go further.

20. Who will win the 2024 Mexican Presidential Election? 86% Sheinbaum

Poll seem to consistently find Sheinbaum with a massive lead. I know nothing about Mexican politics but outside of a scandal or massive polling error this seems like a sure thing. so going to go 90% Sheinbaum/8% Galvez/2% Other.

Market has it at 82/17/2. Going to adjust towards it and end up at 86/13/2 (up to rounding).

21. Will there be a US government shutdown before January 1, 2025? 31%

We’ve had 3 in the last decade and 6 in the last 25 years, for a prior of around 25-30%. On the other hand the situation now is much more volatile, with a tiny republican majority that’s been willing to throw out speakers over perceived compromise. On the plus side, Biden’s been able to avoid drama on it so far and there isn’t any obvious looming conflict. I’ll stick to 30%.

Zvi has 30% and manifold has 35%. Overall I expect manifold to overrate this, so betting on 31%.

22. Will SpaceX's Starship reach orbit in 2024? 75%.

It’s generally a good bet to go against SpaceX. The question is what’s the baseline here. SpaceX don’t seem to have a clear timeline here and the FAA doesn’t seem to have approved anything. Their last test flight failed but I can’t tell if it was intended to reach orbit. If it was, give them about a 45% chance to resolve the issues and succeed within a year. If it wasn’t, let’s go down to 15%. So as a first approximation, we’re at 30% here.

This market is trading at 86% on Manifold, so I assume the last failed launch was intended to reach orbit. I’m still short this market on principle, but I don’t know much and don’t want to go that hard against it, so I’ll stick with 75%.

23. Will cannabis be removed from Schedule I of the Controlled Substance Act before 2025? 55%.

I think this would require an act of congress, which seems unlikely given how few laws this congress passes. On the other hand, this seems like the sort of low-key thing that congress might actually pass, and there have been pushes.

I don’t have a good feel for how to get a prior on this. Obviously it’s never happened before. Apparently there were some failed efforts in 2023, and passing it in 2024 should be harder, so prior is a weak 22%.

Zvi quotes this article, which seems to imply it’s a purely administrative decision. This would definitely put the odds much higher. The market is at 49%. Zvi’s blind prediction is 80%. This article seems to agree it’s a DEA decision that doesn’t need congress, although they can apply pressure. Given there’s at least some ambiguity, seems likely Biden will try to push it through (and if there’s a lawsuit about it it probably won’t affect the market). So given this I think i’m convinced of Zvi’s 55% bottom line.

24. Will a debate be held between Joe Biden and Donald Trump before the 2024 US presidential election? 53%.

Seems unlikely. They didn’t have one last election after the first one, and hostility has if anything gone higher, especially given the January 6 stuff. On the other hand, Trump loves TV exposure and if he thinks it’ll make Biden look old and senile he might go for it. Still, going to eyeball it at 15% prior.

Manifold and Zvi both have it at 73%. I’m short that but not that confident in my prediction, and since it’s 2 to 1 against me here I’ll go up to 53%.

25. Will a member of the United States Congress introduce legislation limiting the use of LLMs in 2024? 81%.

This seems reasonably likely, they’re a big deal and a lot of bills get introduced. The details are pretty weak, either national security or copyright grounds would suffice for a yes. I’d say 80% prior. Manifold has it at 81%, which is roughly identical. Zvi missed this one.

26. Will X declare bankruptcy in 2024? 7%.

Seems unlikely. Musk put a lot of money into buying it, he’s back to being the richest man in the world and can afford to lose some money on it if he has to, and he’d lose face if he let it go bankrupt. They’re not doing super well financially but also aren’t a complete black hole of money. I’d put this at 15% on priors, without looking into any specifics.Random online article that’s the first result of a websearch gives 50%, but that seems more like hyperbolic media than a hard estimate.

Zvi has it at 10% and manifold has it at 8%. I’ll adjust down to slightly below manifold prices, since my main reason to be high was worrying I’d missed something and they seem to confirm I haven’t.

27. Will the S&P 500 index go up over 2024? 73%

It’s been down 6 of the last 30 years, for a prior of 80% to go up. It’s up 0.89% this year so far, and has expected returns of 7-10% and annual volatility of 15-20%. So it’d need to go down about half an sdev to be net negative, which gives is about 70% to go up. Averaging this we get about 75%. I’m guessing geopolitical risk is mostly priced in.

Zvi also skipped this one. Manifold has it at 69%. I’ll adjust slightly down based on this and end up at 73%.

28. Will the US unemployment rate be above 4% in November 2024? 28%

Outside of the pandemic spike, the unemployment rate hs been below 4% since 2018, and is currently at 3.7%. There don’t seem to be any crises that are likely to drive this up (biggest risk this year is probably wars, but wars would be expected to drive this down). So giving this about 12% on blind. Zvi has 35% and manifold has 49%, suggesting I’m not considering enough potential risks. In fairness, under 4% is historically quite low

So overall I’ll adjust up, but not by too much. Let’s go with 28%.

29. Will annual US core CPI inflation be above 3% in December 2024? 27%

Hard to tell. This website seems to have it at 3.2. This one has PCE inflation expected at 2.5, but unclear what that means for CPI. I don’t know enough here to tell who to believe. very weak prior around 50%. Going by Zvi the 2.5% number is credible and it might be lower than that, and we’re already at 3.1%. Zvi ends up at 27% and I don’t think I have any information he doesn’t (the market has gone slightly up since, but based on buys from someone with a poor track record). So I’m sticking with Zvi here.

30. Will Ilya Sutskever still lead OpenAI’s Superalignment team at the end of 2024? 59%

Oh god, OpenAI internal politics. I actively refuse to engage in this issue, and Zvi and Manifold are at 60% and 58%, so guessing 59%.

31. Will Ali Khamenei cease to be supreme leader of Iran in 2024? 10%

This seems unlikely if he’s alive, so mostly a bet on the actuarial life table. He’s 84 and we don’t actually know much about his health, so going to go with the actuarial table’s 90% to live the year. Zvi has it slightly higher at 14% (presumably based on a war with Israel making him lose power, which I think is unlikely), so sticking at 10%.

32. Will US refugee admissions exceed 100,000 in fiscal year 2024? 12%

This hasn’t happened since 1994. This graph suggests a recent spike, but it doesn’t seem close to breaking 100K and is also likely to be blunted, especially given how much bipartisan consensus there is against taking in more refugees. On the pro side, if the refugees themselves have figured out how to game the system better it might cause a surge. Still, putting this at 12%.

Zvi copied the exact same graph and settled at 15%. I’m sticking with 12%, since it seems like neither of us can think of a reason this would happen.

33. Will SpaceX attempt to catch a Starship booster with the tower in 2024? 32%

In general pessimistic on SpaceX succeeding at things, but this only requires them to try. I didn’t see that they have any plans to start, though. so giving this a weak 15% blind guess.

Zvi has it at 50%, manifold has it at 39%, and Zvi quotes a guy who’s probably more informed who says they’ll try. I’ll stick to my principle of expecting Manifold to be optimistic and jump to 32%.

34. Will Donald Trump be convicted of a felony before the 2024 presidential election? 52%.

Similar markets seem to have it at 60%. I don’t know enough about legal stuff to say, beyond expecting him to try to delay it and expecting judges to try to do their job, on the whole. 60% sounds reasonable. Zvi also had it at 60% and Manifold has it at 45%, but I don’t expect Manifold to be especially reliable here. settling at 52%.

35. Will the Fed Funds Rate on December 31, 2024 be below 4%? 40%.

I honestly don’t know what these are. Seems like they’re over 5.25 now but were below 4 a year ago? Probably something about inflation, which we expect to go down. But no clue at what lag, so I’m just gonna go with Zvi here. Zvi has it at 40%. Seems reasonable.

36. Will there be a serious radiation incident at any nuclear plant in Ukraine before 2025? 4%

There hasn’t been one so far and I don’t see why a new one would start. We came close once at the start of the war, so if we give it a 50% chance once in two years that a prior of 25%, which we cut in half based on current evidence. So about 12% blind.

Zvi ended up at 4%. Seems convincing, especially given his arguments that this was at 20% last year (so we were probably never very close, and that 50% in the first year should be 25%). So sure, let’s stick with 4%.

Personal Predictions

It’s worth having a few personal questions here too:

1. Will I be living in the US in a year? Technically the question asks about mid-2025, which does significantly raise these odds. I’m long at current odds and am mostly not going longer as a hedge - Right now I miss living in New York and want to move back, and while there are qualifiers (I like my job here in Israel and worry about moving since I’d probably be stuck for at least four years and might not like my new one, there’s a small but nontrivial chance I end up living in a third country), the whole war thing pushes towards the other direction (I worry about further escalation and would prefer to not be here for that).

2. Which countries will I visit in 2024? Wrote down a list of five plausible or interesting questions. This market’s a bit messed up since I intended it to be settleable to multiple answers but it seems to default to multiple choice with one expected right answer. Not sure how to fix that.

3. Who will be the author of my favourite new book in 2024? The author doesn’t have to be new or even new to me, but the book does (e.g. if I end up reading and loving Great Expectations, this could settle as Dickens, but not if I re-read a Christmas Carol and decide it’s the bee’s knees). No strong feeling there so far, just put a couple of authors who’re currently on my reading list pretty much at random.

Well, that’s it for 2024 predictions. Will try to have a 2023 prediction review up in a few weeks (at least, if Scott uploads anything I can use as a baseline. If not I’ll just have to work off my old post on it).