2022 Prediction Results

Every year, I make predictions about what's going to happen over the following 365.25 days, and on New Years Eve I come back to see how well I did. At this point, it's the main thing I'm still using this blog for. 2022 has come to an end, so let's see how well I did back in January. Predictions which I got right are left unmarked and predictions which I got wrong are struck-through. For the first time, I didn't end up throwing out any predictions as ambiguous or inconclusive. 

PERSONAL/PROFESSIONAL/ACADEMIC

I will read 15 books this year: 90%
...20 books: 80%
...25 books: 60%
I will read three technical/science/engineering books this year: 70%
I will read more nonfiction books than fiction books this year: 60%
I will write an average of one blog post per month: 90%
...greater than one blog post per month: 60%
My current ideations will not result in a major political/religious/philosophical conversion: 80%
I will still be using Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr: 90%
I will remain single this year: 60%
I will vote in the 2022 midterms: 95%
I will not have my wisdom teeth removed: 70%
I will not be hospitalized this year: 90%
Neither of my parents will be hospitalized this year: 80%
I will compete in either NaNoWriMo proper or the Summer Writing Program: 95%
...and succeed: 90%
My French will improve this year: 60%
I will not begin learning Russian this year: 90%
I will finish my MS degree in aerospace engineering: 95%
I will still be working for SES: 90%
I will still be living in Virginia: 95%
I will move to a new apartment: 80%
I will get involved locally with the Less Wrong/ACX community: 70%
I will get involved with the local Mensa group: 80%
I will attend some sort of Solstice Event (including remote viewing): 60%

SCIENCE/SPACE

No successful human clones announced: 95%
Venusian phosphine continues to not replicate: 90%
No other strong evidence of extra-terrestrial life found: 95%
Both Voyager spacecraft will still be operational: 90%
Hubble Space Telescope will still be operational: 90%
MSL Curiosity will still be operational: 90%
Perseverance will still be operational: 95%
Ingenuity will still be operational: 60%
International Space Station will still be operational: 95%
Boeing conducts Orbital Test Flight 2 successfully: 80%
Boeing does not conduct the Crewed Test Fight: 60%
Europa Clipper still scheduled to launch in 2024: 95%
JUICE still scheduled to launch in 2023: 95%
Artemis 1 launches this year: 90%
Artemis 2 still scheduled to launch on or before 31 December 2024: 70%
Artemis 3 still scheduled to launch on or before 31 December 2025: 60%
Lunar Gateway still scheduled to begin construction in 2024: 60%
Starship will not successfully complete an orbital test flight this year: 60%
Virgin Galactic will begin tourist flights this year: 70%
United States will have more successful orbital launches than China this year: 60%
China will have more successful orbital launches than Russia: 90%
No crewed flights beyond Low Earth Orbit: 95%
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%

CORONAVIRUS

US cumulative confirmed cases exceed 80 million: 90%
...100 million: 80%
...120 million: 60%
US cumulative confirmed deaths exceed 1 million: 90%
...1.2 million: 60%
Global cumulative confirmed cases exceed 400 million: 90%
...500 million: 80%
Global cumulative confirmed deaths exceed 6 million: 95%
...7 million: 90%
...8 million: 70%
At least 250 million Americans vaccinated: 95%
...fully vaccinated: 70%
At least 6 billion people vaccinated globally: 90%
...fully vaccinated: 70%
At least 150 million Americans receive a booster dose: 80%
The FDA approves a fourth booster dose (either generic or variant-specific): 70%
I will receive a fourth dose of coronavirus vaccine this year: 70%
No additional vaccines approved by the FDA: 80%
I do not experience a confirmed case of COVID-19: 70%
No one in my close extended family dies of COVID-19: 70%
My workplace does not go to full in-office at any point this year: 95%
My workplace does not go fully-remote at any point this year: 80%
I am still wearing face masks in public >50% of the time: 90%
A new variant overtakes Omicron and Delta in the United States: 60%

POLITICS/WORLD

Joe Biden will still be President of the United States: 95%
Kamala Harris will still be Vice-President of the United States: 95%
Nancy Pelosi will still be Speaker of the House: 95%
Chuck Schumer will still be Senate Majority Leader: 90%
A bill with the title "Build Back Better" passes: 60%
The Expanded Child Tax Credit is not renewed: 80%
No form of federal carbon tax is passed in the US: 90%
Democrats will maintain control of the House at midterms: 70%
Democrats will maintain control of the Senate at midterms: 60%
At least one major Republican (current or former Governor, Senator, or Representative) announces a Presidential bid: 70%
Donald Trump does not announce a new Presidential bid this year: 80%
Biden approval rating above 40% per FiveThirtyEight: 80%
United States will not go to war with a nuclear power: 90%
United States will not enter a major new war (>100 US casualties): 70%
Boris Johnson will still be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 90%
Justin Trudeau will still be Prime Minister of Canada: 95%
Emmanuel Macron will still be President of France: 60%
Vladimir Putin will still be President of Russia: 95%
No additional countries will opt to leave the European Union: 90%
North Korean government will not be overthrown or displaced: 95%
North Korean government will not begin major liberal reforms: 95%
Fewer than 100 cases of wild polio this year: 60%
Fewer than 1000 cases of vaccine-derived polio this year: 60%

META

I will remember to score these predictions: 95%
I will be overconfident in these predictions: 70%
I will be less overconfident in my predictions than in 2021: 60%

How does that add up? The short answer is: really poorly.

The long answer, as always, involves some math. Breaking the results out by confidence level:

60% predictions: 11 right and 10 wrong, for a score of 52%

70% predictions: 10 right and 6 wrong, for a score of 63%

80% predictions: 8 right and 6 wrong, for a score of 57%

90% predictions: 20 right and 7 wrong, for a score of 74%

95% predictions: 20 right and 2 wrong, for a score of 91%

About the nicest thing I can say about my performance is that I managed to be more right than wrong in all the ranges, though it was a close thing. There's no totally egregious bands like in some previous years, but I was consistently overconfident across the board and by considerable margins.

Graphed, the results look like this:

What can I learn from this, besides to listen to that niggling feeling of doubt even more than I already do? For that, I find breaking it down by category helps.

My two worst categories this year were Personal/Professional/Academic and Coronavirus, where I scored 56% and 50%, respectively. This makes a certain amount of sense. My life changed a lot in 2022, to the tune of switching jobs and moving to a new state. A lot of my academic and professional goals, as well as my personal habits, were necessarily disrupted. To an extent that's a one-time thing, but it also highlights how much these things can change and therefore to take little stock in them continuing—especially at my age and life stage. Coronavirus, on the other hand, fell by the wayside more than I predicted in the post-Omicron world. There was no renewed vaccine push, efforts to vaccinate people in underdeveloped nations fell through, and people stopped getting tested as much so the number of confirmed cases and deaths dropped accordingly. Given that this was a new and dynamic situation, I'm not to cut up about my predictions being wrong. At this point things are probably fairly stable and I don't think I'll even include this category for 2023.

Science/Space did very well for a change at 92% accuracy. Schedule slips were actually fairly small this year, and I'd dropped my confidence accordingly. I'll probably be dropping my confidence even lower next year, despite this year's success.

Politics/World also did fairly well at 78%. I got a few things wrong, but with the exception of Boris Johnson's departure, none of those were particularly high-confidence predictions. For the most part, the world behaved the way I broadly expected. That said, if I'd had any predictions about Ukraine on there, I probably would have been wildly wrong. I suspect that category will be a lot more interesting to score next year.

My overall accuracy was 69%. For this set of predictions the closet I could get to perfect calibration would have been 80% at the top-level. This is my worst result since 2018, which I scored 65% accuracy overall. I think that was my worst result since I started doing these, so 2022 was my second-worst year of predictions on record.

Clearly there is still room to improve and I will be continuing to make these annual predictions. Last year I floated the idea of shorter-term sets, and I think that may be necessary to improve my calibration. In the meantime, update your confidence in my object-level claims accordingly.