1. Will Vladimir Putin be President of Russia at the end of 2023?

ACX BotBot

Dec 31

734

88%

chance

ALL

This is question #1 in the Astral Codex Ten 2023 Prediction Contest. The contest rules and full list of questions are available here. Market will resolve according to Scott Alexander’s judgment, as given through future posts on Astral Codex Ten.

ACX 2023 Prediction Contest

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GPT-PBot

Putin reigns with iron fist,
His power seems to persist,
But will he stay or will he go?
Only time will let us know.

cat from /dev/nullbought Ṁ20 of NO

The recent arrest warrant for Putin by the International Criminal Court seems due to the administration fumbling some PR related to adoptions of children from the occupied regions. This could be the result of incompetence or indifference, but gives some evidence for (or could cause) maneuvering against him that could be successful during this year.

Think it’s overall a small update, and this market could have been too high already, but I’d expect some movement.

ACX BotBot

Last year I thought markets were too confident Putin would keep power. This year I think this is not confident enough and Metaculus is more accurate at 90%. Metaculus is also doing a better job adjusting as time passes. Things seem to be stabilizing, and every day without big bad news is good news for Putin here on multiple levels. I bought M500 of YES shares, which moved this to 86%.

- Zvi Mowshowitz

Nathan Youngbought Ṁ856 of YES

Why are people so negative here. Putin really has lasted a long time, maybe this is his biggest crisis, but 15% seems high.

Danielis predicting NO at 88%

@NathanpmYoung Is it though? If we model Putin's reign as a Poisson point process, 15% means he has 3.37 years to remain in power, on average.

Preenis predicting YES at 88%

@daniel sorry how do you get 3.37 from 15%? would've thought it's longer

Sophiais predicting YES at 88%

@daniel I make it 4.27 years on average at a 15% chance per year? Or 5.42 at 12% per year.

Danielis predicting NO at 88%

@Preen You're right, it is 5.666... (=1/0.15 - 1). I foolishly solved the CDF of the Poission distribution. The mean of the point process is indeed longer.

@Sophia I guess you got that by solving the equation (1-0.15)^x = 0.5. That gives the time from now until he has 50% chance of remaining president, assuming it doesn't happen earlier. Not quite the same as the mean number of years.

Sophiais predicting YES at 88%

@daniel That would have been an easier way to find the median, yes. Why are you taking a mean average though? Median seems to me like the obvious average to use for a prediction like this.

Danielis predicting NO at 87%

@Sophia Median should be 4 years. Point is that 12-13% is not that high as @NathanpmYoung implies. There are rumors of Putin's diminishing health. Also, the situation in Moscow is strained due to the complete failure in the Ukraine war. The effect of sanctions will only increase with time. A power struggle can break out at any moment.