We will judge casualties for the Ukraine war based on the sum of the UN estimate of civilian deaths + injuries, plus each side's report of the other side's deaths + injuries. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Field_casualties_and_injuries . We reserve the right to change this if one side starts giving implausible numbers. When a range is offered, the midpoint of the range will be taken. If there is no easy way to determine which Ukraine casualties happened in 2022 vs. 2023, the current total of 225,216 will be subtracted from the best available end-of-2023 number. The casualty numbers for other wars will be calculated in a method as similar to this as possible; if an identical methodology cannot be used, we reserve the right to use credible third-party (eg US government, well-known neutral media outlet) estimates.
This is question #13 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.
@MarcusAbramovitch not really: the market is clear that resolution waits for ACX post, which is not up yet.
@MartinModrak Scott who runs Astral Codex Prediction Contest has already stated and I have resolved many here and helped with Metaculus resolves also. It is safe to resolve ACX questions.
ACXBot is NOT run by Scott, Scott just makes the questions. Manifold staff member runs the ACXBot and we can resolve if we have the answers.
It is pointed out on Metaculus that the Tigray conflict had more casualties than Russia-Ukraine in 2022. That war is over for now, but we cannot be sure that will hold. The Metaculus prediction was down at 12%, then people thought about it more and bumped it to 24% without any news, Manifold seems to have shrugged through it. Without looking into details of various situations I don’t feel strongly here and I don’t see enough value in doing the work. I’ll buy M10 of NO for tracking.
If the Tigray war ceasefire does not hold, then seems like that war would be close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Tigray_War#:~:text=According%20to%20researchers%20at%20Ghent,the%20world's%20bloodiest%20contemporary%20conflicts.%22