At the beginning of every year, I make predictions. At the end of every year, I score them. Here are 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

And here are the predictions I made for 2021 (in April; I was really late). Bolded statements happened, italicized statements did not happen (as of 1/1/22). Neither-bold-nor-italic resolved ambiguous.

We have a debate every year over whether 50% predictions are meaningful in this paradigm; feel free to continue it.

**
1. Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than fifty percent: 80%
2. Court packing is clearly going to happen (new justices don’t have to be appointed by end of year): 5%
3. Yang is New York mayor: 80%
4. Newsom recalled as CA governor: 5%
5. At least $250 million in damage from BLM protests this year: 30%
6. Significant capital gains tax hike (above 30% for highest bracket): 20%
7. Trump is allowed back on Twitter: 20%
**8. Tokyo Olympics happen on schedule: 70%
9. Major flare-up (significantly worse than anything in past 5 years) in Russia/Ukraine war: 20%
10. Major flare-up (significantly worse than anything in past 10 years) in Israel/Palestine conflict: 5%
11. Major flare-up (significantly worse than anything in past 50 years) in China/Taiwan conflict: 5%
12. Netanyahu is still Israeli PM: 40%
13. Prospera has at least 1000 residents: 30%

ECON/TECH
14. Gamestop stock price still above $100: 50%
15. Bitcoin above 100K: 40%
16. Ethereum above 5K: 50%
_17. Ethereum above 0.05 BTC: 70%
18. Dow above 35K: 90%
_19. …above 37.5K: 70%
20. Unemployment above 5%: 40%
21. Google widely allows remote work, no questions asked: 20%
22. Starship reaches orbit: 60%

COVID
** 23. Fewer than 10K daily average official COVID cases in US in December 2021: 30%
24. Fewer than 50K daily average COVID cases worldwide in December 2021: 1%
25. Greater than 66% of US population vaccinated against COVID: 50%
26. India’s official case count is higher than US: 50%
**27. Vitamin D is not generally recognized (eg NICE, UpToDate) as effective COVID treatment: 70%
28. Something else not currently used becomes first-line treatment for COVID: 40%
29. Some new variant not currently known is greater than 25% of cases: 50%
30. Some new variant where no existing vaccine is more than 50% effective: 40%
31. US approves AstraZeneca vaccine: 20%
32. Most people I see in the local grocery store aren’t wearing a mask: 60%

COMMUNITY
33. Major rationalist org leaves Bay Area: 60%
34. MIRI relocates to Washington State: 20%
35. MIRI relocates to New England: 20%
36. MIRI relocates somewhere else: 20%
37. Less Wrong team relocates: 30%
_38. No new residents at our housing cluster: 40%
_39. No current residents leave our housing cluster: 60%
40. [friend] goes back to Indiana: 40%
_41. [friend] is in a primary relationship: 50%
42. [friend] is in a primary relationship: 30%
43. [friend] is in a primary relationship: 20%
44. [friend] has gotten [job]: 50%
_45. [friend] has recovered their health: 70%
46. [friend] has gotten egg freezing: 30%
**_47. [friend] is pregnant: 70%
_48. [friends] are still together: 50%
49. [friend] is still at [job]: 80%
50. [friend] is in college: 60%
**_51. [friends] live in [house]: 30%
52. [other friends] live in [house]: 30%
_53. At least 7 days my house is orange or worse on PurpleAir.com because of fires: 80%

PERSONAL
54. I am engaged: 60%
55. I am married: 20%
56. [redacted]: 10%
57. [redacted]: 10%
58. [redacted]: 5%
59. [redacted]: 20%
60. There are no appraisal-related complications to the new house purchase: 50%
61. I live in the new house: 95%
62. I live in the top bedroom: 60%
63. I can hear / get annoyed by neighbor TV noise: 40%
64. I’m playing in a D &D campaign: 70%
65. I go on at least one international trip: 60%
66. I spend at least a month living somewhere other than the Bay: 50%
67. I continue my current exercise routine (and get through an entire cycle of it) in Q4 2021: 70%
68. I meditate at least 15 days in Q4 2021: 60%
69. I take oroxylum at least 5 times in Q4 2021: 40%
70. I take some substance I haven’t discovered yet at least 5 times in Q4 2021 (testing exempted): 30%
71. I do at least six new biohacking experiments in the next eight months: 40%
72. [redacted]: 30%
73. The Twitter account I check most frequently isn’t one of the five I check frequently now: 20%
74. I make/retweet at least 25 tweets between now and 2022: 70%

WORK
75. Lorien has 100+ patients: 90%
76. 150+ patients: 20%
77. 200+ patients: 5%
78. I’ve written at least ten more Lorien writeups (so total at least 27): 30%
79. [redacted]: 70%
80. [redacted]: 80%
81. [redacted]: 60%
82. [redacted]: 40%
83. [redacted]: 60%
84. I have switched medical records systems: 20%
85. I have changed my pricing scheme: 20%

BLOG
86. ACX is earning more money than it is right now: 70%
87. [redacted]: 10%
88. [redacted]: 50%
89. [redacted]: 20%
90. There is another article primarily about SSC/ACX/me in a major news source: 10%
91. I subscribe to at least 5 new Substacks (so total of 8): 20%
92. I’ve read and reviewed How Asia Works: 90%
93. I’ve read and reviewed Nixonland: 70%
94. I’ve read and reviewed Scout Mindset: 60%
95. I’ve read and reviewed at least two more dictator books: 50%
96. I’ve started and am at least 25% of the way through the formal editing process for Unsong: 30%
97. Unsong is published: 10%
98. I’ve written at least five chapters of some non-Unsong book I hope to publish: 40%
99. “On The Natural Faculties” wins the book review contest: 60%
100. I run an ACX reader survey: 50%
101. I run a normal ACX survey (must start, but not necessarily finish, before end of year): 90%
102. By end of year, some other post beats NYT commentary for my most popular post: 10%
103. I finish + postRise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars: 90%
104. I finish + postDon’t Give Up On Having Kids Because Of Climate Change: 80%
105. I finish + postCarbon Costs Quantified: 80%
106. I have a queue of fewer than ten extra posts: 70%

META
** 107. I double my current amount of money ($1000) on PredictIt: 10%
**108. I post my scores on these predictions before 3/1/22: 70%

To make binning easier, I’ve converted 5% predictions into 95% predictions of the opposite, 10% predictions into 90% predictions of the opposite, and so on. So:

Of 50% predictions, I got 7 right and 6 wrong, for a total of 54%
Of 60% predictions, I got 11 right and 11 wrong, for a total of 50%
Of 70% predictions, I got 20 right and 6 wrong, for a total of 77%
Of 80% predictions, I got 20 right and 3 wrong, for a total of 87%
Of 90% predictions, I got 10 right and 1 wrong, for a total of 91%
Of 95% and 99% predictions, I got 8 right and 0 wrong, for a total of 100%

Here’s the usual graph:

Last year I was mostly overconfident. This year I was very slightly underconfident (except in the 60% bin). I see no consistent pattern of errors here and am not going to update on it very much. I’m pretty happy with this, since I thought the questions this year were harder than usual.

Simon M did a similar exercise on Less Wrong, and compared me to Zvi and to various prediction markets. This was slightly biased against me, because Zvi got to see my guesses first and choose which ones to adjust on, and the markets are the markets. Still, he found:

…where lower scores are better. So Zvi beat me, and the markets beat both of us. This is fine; nobody should be able to beat the market consistently, and the market was able to (though probably didn’t bother to) read both Zvi’s and my estimates.

I’ll post predictions for this coming year next week.