Some Impactful Metaculus Questions
Created by: Nuño Sempere
Taken from this post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HDoMrQFG76QtkdrZJ/impactful-forecasting-prize-for-forecast-writeups-on-curated
No single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to therapies, and global reach. But we know that the worst-case attributes can be realized independently. For example, some diseases...
In September 2015, 193 world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and called for a “data revolution” to enhance accountability in measuring the progress towards their fulfilment. The SDGs have 17 goals of which the first is “To...
A synthetic biological weapon is a 'living' agent capable of infecting, harming, and/or killing a target host. For the purposes of this question, we focus on human hosts, exclude weapons that consist only of toxins, even if their source is...
Genome editing is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified or replaced in the genome of a living organism (Wikipedia). The first gene-edited babies—Lulu and Nana—were reportedly born in October 2018.
***How many...
Weapons in which the energy is provided by nuclear fission or fusion have only twice in history been detonated outside of a controlled test environment, in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events in World War II.
Since then, the world has nearly gone to...
In 2020, the Future of Life Institute published a report entitled "The Windfall Clause: Distributing the Benefits of AI for the Common Good." (They also wrote an abridged version to be published in the Proceedings of AIES. Also, fun aside: Metaculus'...
Many efforts to reduce the effects of climate change are focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the various sectors that contribute to them, for example electricity/heat production, agriculture, transportation, and industrial uses. In most...
Per this tweet, Robin Hanson has bet Alex Tabarrok that
Systems in GPT line will by 2025 make <$1B in customer revenue clearly tied to such systems. If product contains such as component, but also has other features, one needs to attribute best...
This question has been posed by Rethink Priorities, a non-profit research organisation, as part of their work on European Union animal welfare policies.
European Union (EU) legislation currently allows the use of "enriched" cages for egg-laying...
The International Math Olympiad is a mathematics competition for kids 18-and-under featuring extrordinarily difficult and novel mathematics problems. Contestants complete a total of 6 problems over 2 days, with 4.5 hours each day to submit their...
Consider figure 15 from this paper.
Some people (arguably the authors of this paper) predict that as we scale models past GPT-3's size (the 10^11 parameter learning curve, models with parameter count X trained on X elapsed tokens will score close to...
The People's Republic of China claims sovereignty over the land currently controlled by the Republic of China (Taiwan) and has been increasingly belligerent in recent years about their claim here. NBC news recently claimed that the threat of China...
This is one of several questions in this tournament focused on nuclear proliferation, force sizes, or yields. See here for a list of such questions and some discussion of these topics.
Currently, nine states possess nuclear weapons. Below is a...
Related Questions on Metaculus:
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Will there be a deadly clash involving gunfire or explosives between India and China before 2024?
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Will there be a US-China war by 2035?
Will there be a China-India war by 2035?
For the purposes of this...
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, as defined by the U.S. Department of Defense, are “weapon system[s] that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.”
Such systems, colloquially known...
Embryo screening is the process of examining the genome of an embryo to determine if certain genes or sets of genes are present (the technical term is preimplantation genetic testing (PGD)). Examining embryos for genetic defects can allow prospective...
Xi Jinping is currently nearing the end of his second term as CCP General Secretary and is expected to make a bid for a third term and win it with a 92% chance according to a current Metaculus question. There is considerable speculation that Xi will...
Wikipedia states:
"[NATO] is an intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries and 2 North American countries. [...] NATO constitutes a system of collective security, whereby its independent member states agree to mutual...
This is one of several questions in this tournament focused on funding and labor allocated to nuclear risk reduction. See here for a list of such questions and some discussion of this topic.
As far as I (Michael Aird) am aware:
- The John D. and...
This is one of several questions in this tournament focused on nuclear proliferation, force sizes, or yields. See here for a list of such questions and some discussion of these topics.
The United Nations states:
"The Treaty on the...
Germany's recently elected coalition government announced (in November 2021) more aggressive pledges to add renewable energy to their electricity grid, pledging to power 80% of their electricity demand with renewables, and pledging to phase out coal...
The United States withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement in November 2020, following an announcement in June 2017 that the United States would withdraw by President Trump and giving formal notice of its intention to leave the agreement in November...
Dashboards cannot be changed after they are created.