2020 Prediction Results

Every year, I make predictions about how the coming year will go. At the end of the year, I score them. 2020 is, at long last, over, which means it's time to see how many of my sixty-eight predictions came true.

As in previous years, predictions left unmarked came true, while predictions struck through did not. This year, I am throwing out two predictions, which are marked in italics. First, I'm not sure how to count a relatively quiet Discord chat insofar as it comes to "participating in the Less Wrong/SSC community". When I made that prediction in at the start of January, I wasn't considering the possibility that external forces could put an end to in-personal socializing. (By the end of January, I was.) Second, I didn't consider the possibility that control of the Senate could come down to run-off elections occurring after the turn of the year.

There's also an ambiguous case which I'm leaving in. I predicted that Starship wouldn't fly this year; I meant that it would fly to orbit, which it didn't. However, I admit that, once again, I should have been more specific in my prediction, given that suborbital and atmospheric test flights are a thing.

PERSONAL/ACADEMIC

I will read 15 books this year: 95%
....20 books: 80%
....25 books: 70%
I will read three technical/science/engineering books this year: 80%
...five books: 60%
I will write an average of one blog post per month: 90%
....two blog posts per month: 60%
I will not experience a major political/religious/philosophical conversion: 95%
I will still be using Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr: 80%
I will remain single this year: 70%
I will vote in the 2020 general elections: 95%
I will have my wisdom teeth removed: 60%
I will not be hospitalized this year: 95%
I will compete in the NaNoWriMo Summer Writing Program: 90%
....and succeed: 80%
My French will not improve this year: 80%
I will not begin learning Russian this year: 80%
I will still be attending graduate school: 90%
....on track to graduate in May 2021: 80%
I will end the year GPA 3.5 or above: 70%
I will still be participating in the Less Wrong/SSC community: 95%
I will attend some sort of Solstice event: 70%

SCIENCE/SPACE

No successful human clones announced: 90%
No strong evidence of extra-terrestrial life found: 95%
Both Voyager spacecraft will still be operational: 80%
Hubble Space Telescope will still be operational: 90%
International Space Station will still be operational: 95%
JWST scheduled to launch on or before December 31, 2021: 70%
SpaceX conducts Demonstration Mission 2 successfully: 70%
Boeing conducts the Crew Test Flight successfully: 60%
Astronauts (public or private) launch from American soil to above the Kármán Line: 70%
One Commercial Crew rotation begins this year: 60%
SLS will not launch this year: 60%
Virgin Galactic tourist flights will not begin this year: 60%
Blue Origin begins crewed tests this year: 60%
SpaceX Starship will not fly this year: 60%
Rocket Lab will demonstrate successful stage recovery: 60%
China will have more successful orbital launches than the US this year: 80%
The United States will have more successful orbital launches than Russia: 90%
No crewed flights beyond Low Earth Orbit: 95%
Shenzhou 12 successfully completed: 70%
No deaths in space this year: 90%
No country leaves the ISS Treaty: 90%
Sci-Hub will remain easily accessible from the United States: 90%

POLITICS/WORLD

Donald Trump will still be President of the United States: 95%
Mike Pence will still be Vice-President of the United States: 95%
At least one US government shutdown will occur this year: 60%
Donald Trump wins the Republican Party nomination: 95%
Joe Biden wins the Democratic Party nomination: 70%
The Democratic Party nominee will win the Presidency: 60%
Democrats will maintain control the House: 70%
Republicans will maintain control of the Senate: 70%
United States will not go to war with a nuclear power: 95%
United States will not enter a major new war (>100 US casualties): 80%
Boris Johnson will still be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 90%
Justin Trudeau will still be Prime Minister of Canada: 95%
Vladimir Putin will still be President of Russia: 95%
UK will leave the European Union: 80%
No additional counties will opt to leave the European Union: 95%
North Korean government will not be overthrown or displaced: 95%
North Korean government will not begin major liberal reforms: 95%
Bitcoin will end the year valued $500 or above: 90%
....$1000 or above: 80%
....$5000 or above: 60%
Fewer than 200 cases of wild polio this year: 70%
Fewer than 350 case of vaccine-derived polio this year: 60%

META

I will remember to score these predictions: 95%
I will still be overconfident in these predictions: 70%

The last prediction requires a bit of analysis before scoring. However, it did not end up being much a a tie-breaker question.

In each band of question:

60% predictions: 7 right and 7 wrong, for a score of 50%

70% predictions: 9 right and 3 wrong, for a score of 75%

80% predictions: 11 right and 1 wrong, for a score of 92%

90% predictions: 11 right and 0 wrong, for a score of 100%

95% predictions: 17 right and 0 wrong, for a score of 100%

These suggest that I was underconfident in 2020 (of all the years for that to happen!). Even before scoring the overconfidence question as incorrect, the 70% prediction band was at 83%, which makes it even more underconfident.

Graphed, my results look like this:

This is actually worse calibration than last year, when my results more-closely hugged the perfect calibration line. Deviations from the orange line indicate the degree of under- or over-confidence at that point. This year, I was above the line, or underconfident, for all but the 60% category. Note, though, that if I had had one more 70% prediction incorrect, and one more 60% prediction correct, that I would have been as close to the line as possible with the fractions at hand (after accounting for the questions which I threw out). As such, these are relatively good results.

By category, I did best in Politics/World with 90% accuracy, followed by Science/Space (86%) and then Personal/Academic (76%). My overall accuracy was 83% i.e., I got 55 out of 66 questions correct.

In part due to high accuracy, I did not have any major failure areas this year. The biggest single thing I can point to is overconfidence in my reading input and writing output. The former can be attributed, at least partially, to a couple of poor book choices (including one which I started last August but didn't finish until July of this year). As for writing, well, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson about the need for deadlines by now. After all, I finally finished a novel this year, but only because of summer NaNoWriMo.

At this point, the takeaway could honestly be that I've become a bit too cagey in my predictions. There may be some truth to that—I allowed manufactured normalcy to keep me from expressing my true concerns about coronavirus through most of February. I'm not sure that more risky calls are the right reaction, though, given how many unexpected things happened on a more concrete level. Who called Mitt Romney marching with Black Lives Matter activists?

Perhaps the real takeaway, for my friends and family, is that when I make a prediction, it's probably on the conservative side. Therefore, QED, everyone should defer to my judgement always (or at least when my confidence is above 60%).