'I predict that the chance that a major episode of violence will break out in the next decade—a conflict with 100,000 deaths in a year, or a million deaths overall—is 9.7 percent' —Steven Pinker

Created by gwern on 2011-11-03; known on 2022-01-01; judged wrong by PseudonymousUser on 2022-01-01.

• gwern estimated 10% on 2011-11-03
• gwern said “2011+10=the end of 2021 or 1 Jan 2022. cite to his new Better Angels of our Nature book” on 2011-11-03
• Jayson Virissimo estimated 20% on 2011-11-03
• PseudonymousUser estimated 50% on 2011-11-03
• JoshuaZ estimated 12% on 2011-11-03
• jtandy estimated 70% on 2011-11-03
• tswift estimated 80% and said “I agree with Steven Pinker that it is very unlikely. Globalization prevents most conflict in developed countries but it is possible in places like Africa” on 2011-11-04
• tswift estimated 80% and said “I agree with Steven Pinker that it is very unlikely. Globalization prevents conflict in developed countries but it is possible in places like Africa” on 2011-11-04
• chemotaxis101 estimated 90% on 2011-11-05
• PseudonymousUser said “If you think it’s unlikely, you meant to type 20%, not 80%.” on 2011-11-05
• antsan said “I don’t think that this prediction makes any sense. How would you measure the success of this prediction?” on 2011-11-06
• JoshuaZ said “Antsan, the prediction is the quote without the percent. The percent is Pinker’s estimate. ” on 2012-09-04
• PseudonymousUser said “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Death_tolls_by_time_periods” on 2016-10-06
• gwern estimated 65% and said “Syria is very ugly, and showing no signs of improving.” on 2016-10-06
• themusicgod1 estimated 74% on 2016-10-09
• themusicgod1 estimated 50% and said “http://www.iamsyria.org/death-tolls.html Syria won’t make a million at this rate, but the stress from syria conflict causing new conflict is real. Nevertheless now I have context for this quote, not so sure.” on 2017-06-06
• pranomostro estimated 20% on 2018-12-20
• PseudonymousUser said “it looks like Syria was something like 606,000” on 2022-01-01
• PseudonymousUser said “Yemen high estimate is 377,000” on 2022-01-01
• PseudonymousUser   judged this prediction wrong on 2022-01-01.
• PseudonymousUser said “re: the 100,000 per year, Syria peaked at 76,268 in 2014 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_civil_war” on 2022-01-01
• gwern said “I agree. Syria came close, but didn’t ultimately trip either threshold, fading out around 2016 and nothing else in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2010s_conflicts comes close.” on 2022-01-01
• gwern said “Still, one wonders how close it came: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam.html which I’d never heard of apparently came within 1 dud bomb of possibly killing tens of thousands of people” on 2022-01-20