The question before a group made up of some of the best forecasters of world events: What are the odds that China will control at least half of Taiwan’s territory by 2030?
Everyone on the chat gives their answer, and in each case it’s a number. Chinmay Ingalagavi, an economics fellow at Yale, says 8 percent. Nuño Sempere, the 25-year-old Spanish independent researcher and consultant leading our session, agrees. Greg Justice, an MBA student at the University of Chicago, pegs it at 17 percent. Lisa Murillo, who holds a PhD in neuroscience, says 15-20 percent. One member of the group, who asked not to be named in this context because they have family in China who could be targeted by the government there, posits the highest figure: 24 percent.
Sempere asks me for my number. Based on a quick analysis of past military clashes between the countries, I came up with 5 percent. That might not seem too far away from the others, but it feels embarrassingly low in this context. Why am I so out of step?
This is a meeting of Samotsvety. The name comes from a 50-year-old Soviet rock band — more on that later — but the modern Samotsvety specializes in predicting the future. And they are very, very good at it. At Infer, a major forecasting platform at the University of Maryland, the four most accurate forecasters in the site’s history are all members of Samotsvety, and there is a wide gap between them and fifth place. In fact, the gap between them and fifth place is bigger than between fifth and 10th places. They’re waaaaay out ahead.
While Samotsvety members converse on Slack regularly, the Saturday meetings are the heart of the group, and I was sitting in to get a sense of why, exactly, the group was so good. What were these folks doing differently that made them able to see the future when the rest of us can’t?
I knew a bit about forecasting going into the meeting. I’ve written about it; I’ve read Superforecasting, the bestseller by Philip Tetlock and…
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