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If i didn't make commitment to make a 100% or 0% resolution to maximise potential profits of users and ensure engagement, then i would have resolved 51%-54%. (Taking into account Israels actions in West Bank).

I do not think that amount of deaths solely qualify to be a resolution criterion. The war is asymmetrical. When Gaza made its single incursion it has inflicted a more radical deathrate (amount of deaths divided by amount of people in the affected areas), and during the market I have recieved no reason to believe they would be more discriminate if they happened to be able to continue war on the Israels territory. Inflicted deathrate by gaza (deaths by violent attack devided by people who were on the territory of the incursion) was 22%. This number could be higher if people were not able to evacuate from the battlezone (mirroring cornered situation of gazans). Or this could be lower, if less israels had the culture of being weaponised and being a threat to the invader. (This is mirroring justification of deathrates in gaza by israel, like, they have weapons that means they will be killed by the army). I cannot estimate which effect is stronger, so I leave it at 22%.

Inflicted deathrate onto gaza by israel is 7.6% (taking both direct violence and indirect deaths across whole gaza, divided by my lower estimation of people who were directly touched by Israel incursion territory, ie 50% of gaza). Tally of deaths provided by Chatgpt5.

I think that it is the case of picking between 2 evils. Here is why overall I thought that Israel is lesser evil. They are mostly reactionary, not initiating new conflicts. They have tried different solutions over years. They are less ideological, not pursuing extermination (there is 2 million gazans at least, there is no shown intent to kill everyone), while gaza propaganda that I found was religious and calling for indiscriminate extermination.

Remember, I judge not individual people, but systems/concepts as a whole. Even though Gaza has a lot of good people, they were completely unable to change their system for the better during peaceful times. Israel also has a lot of good people, but their democracy allows the possibility that country will improve.

(Knowing your dirty tricks I reply immediately to "so, being unable to change the government means they deserve to die?". No, that does not mean they deserve to die, that is not what is being said, you guys (if had that thought) are shifting into implications and emotional manipulations. I judge the SYSTEMS, NOT THE PEOPLE. When you meet a person and have to decide whether he is a good person or not, you judge his actions as a whole, not the actions of his cells.)

If Gaza were to dominate in the conflict, I would expect Israel to stop exist both as a country and as a set of people. If Israel were to dominate the conflict, I would expect exactly what is happening: Gaza might stop eventually existing as a country, but people will exist.

I believe Israel made a mistake when declaring it is a Jew state. It was meant to mean a safeplace, but that only makes them a saturated highlighted target for many radical religious organisation in the region.

My silly addition to any solution, make Israel change the constitution, make giving passports easier for people from all over the world. Will make them less saturated ideological target and reduce segregation.

@Henry38hw Thank you for your thoughtful analysis

imagine supporting genocide from the people who just experienced the most famous recent example of genocide

There is a famine with reasonable evidence in Gaza. Seems our back and forth was ultimately pointless. https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/countries-in-focus-archive/issue-134/en/

@thatcher1215 I mean, who is responsible for this situation? Hamas bears lots of responsibility. After all this famine declaration is good for them since it makes Israel look bad. It’s not good for Israel.

@nathanwei read the room little bro

@thatcher1215 Sorry I don’t form my opinions based on social desirability bias. I do use prediction markets so if you would like to bet on anything that would be nice. Hamas uses hospitals as command centers. Do you remember that market?

@thatcher1215 There is absolutely no famine in Gaza, and the IPC just destroyed the last shreds of credibility it has with that claim. Read the mortality section of its report. Not once does it mention its own famine criteria of 2 in 10,000 dying from starvation every day. That is because this would mean that there would need to be over 100 people dying every day from starvation in the area it said is subject to famine. There is not only zero evidence that this is happening, there is in fact abundant evidence that there's nothing remotely in the ballpark happening. It's a laughable claim that shows that these are ideological institutions, not independent agencies.

@ShawnReynolds To be fair you can also have 4 per 10,000 children under 5, but the same issue holds there. I looked at the report as well, and it basically said "trust me bro, there are many deaths that aren't reported". That might be true but you would need like a crazily high factor in order to reach that actual threshold. Were there even any back of the envelope calculations? It was pretty bad.

I think the Israel MFA bungled its response because they fixated too much on this 30% vs 15% arm circumference thing or whatever, and I do think that sometimes people use the other threshold when there's not enough data. They might not be right about that. I don't trust that the IPC generally finds some kind of representative sample when it's measuring whose arms are too small. Humanitarian professionals don't interact with a representative sample anyway.

The real issue to me is the death toll. If the Gaza governorate has close to a million people, you would need close to 200 deaths a day from starvation. You maybe need 30-40 dead kids under 5 a day. All in Gaza governorate. I've seen 11 total people in all of Gaza on the worst day. About half the dead kid have been children so it seems representative, and probably easier to hit 2 per 10K than 4 per 10K children.

@ShawnReynolds The IPC declared a famine only in Gaza Governorate yes, where there are over half a million people. However you wouldn't need >100 starving people if you had 20-30 kids under 5 instead. If you have 4 per 100K kids under 5 that counts, and ~10-15% of Gazans are under 5 (median age is 18). Still there's no evidence of it anyway. About half of the malnutrition deaths are under-18s, similar to the general population of Gaza. So I don't think the rate of under-5s is gonna be even twice the total rate, which means the 100 starving people is going to be an easier threshold to hit. But anyway, I don't see either threshold being hit.

@nathanwei My understanding is that under-18s are about 50 percent of the Gaza population, so you would need > 100 deaths per day from just under-18s, which is much harder threshold than > 100 deaths per day total.

@ShawnReynolds No it's 2 per 10K per day of the overall population or 4 per 10K per day of under 5's. Gaza has about 2 million people, and the Gaza Governorate, which is the only place the IPC declared famine so far, currently has almost one million people. They are starting to flee, though that postdates the IPC report, and last I checked it's still over half a million. The IPC didn't declare famine in the rest of Gaza yet, and they said they could if conditions get worse. Given that aid has surged in since their report which only uses data up to mid-July, with aid surging in late July and in August, they might not declare any famine there at all. Still, what's reported is off by what would be necessary from a huge factor. Anyway of course not all of the reported starvation deaths are in Gaza Governorate. They are spread around and there are some in the north or the center. So the rate in Gaza Governorate isn't going to be much higher than in the rest of Gaza. Given that almost half the Gazan population was there it can't be much worse than twice as high even if all the starvation deaths were concentrated there.

@nathanwei Yes sorry, got mixed up with under-18 vs the under-5 criteria.

@ShawnReynolds

https://x.com/NuritBaytch/status/1959442860409041174

https://x.com/YannayASpitzer/status/1959254848735477990

@ShawnReynolds yeah this aged like milk like everybody knew it would

@GageMason Everything I said still applies 100 percent. If you want to dispute any of the facts, then go ahead.

@ShawnReynolds Alright, since you’re inviting me to dispute the facts, let’s dive in. I get that you’re standing by your original take, and those links from Nathan point to some critiques of the IPC’s methods—like questioning how they handle malnutrition measurements or death rates without perfect data. But here’s the thing: those criticisms miss the bigger picture, and dismissing the famine call outright just lets Israel off the hook for what’s looking like a deliberate squeeze on Gaza.

First off, Israel’s been blocking full humanitarian access and controlling every bit of aid going in for almost two years now. That means we can’t get the complete surveys or direct counts needed to tick every box perfectly. Experts like the IPC have to use inference based on what they can see, drawing from patterns in other conflicts where things go south fast once malnutrition hits these levels. It’s not some wild guess; it’s standard practice when a government restricts entry like this. If Israel let in more observers and aid without all the red tape, we’d have clearer numbers, but they don’t, so assuming the worst isn’t bias—it’s cautious realism given the history here.

And speaking of those numbers, they’re riding such a thin line it’s suspicious. Malnutrition rates are sitting at 12-13% in some reports, just shy of the 15% cutoff for famine classification. Death stats are patchy because no one’s allowed in to verify fully, but even with what we have, it’s close enough that a small spike could push it over. When one side holds all the power over food trucks, checkpoints, and surveys, it starts to feel like they’re calibrating things just enough to stay under the radar and avoid the full international condemnation that comes with an official famine label. Why else keep tightening the screws despite the warnings?

Brushing this off ignores the real human cost. the UN’s reporting over half a million people in starvation conditions, with kids already dying from hunger and related issues. We’ve seen this play out in other wars; once wasting sets in, deaths ramp up quick if aid doesn’t flood in. Supporting Israel in this means backing policies that have the whole world piling on backlash, from Europe calling out the offensives to even Netanyahu himself admitting Israel’s getting isolated. But instead of easing up, they dig in harder, making it worse. If we keep writing this off as no big deal or just ideological noise, we’re basically enabling a man-made mess that could be stopped with better access and less restriction.

At the end of the day, lives should trump the politics. Those methodological nitpicks in the links are fair to debate, but they don’t erase the suffering or the fact that Israel’s choices are driving this. Maybe it’s time to rethink that support and push for real change before it gets even uglier.

@GageMason I'll take the bait and respond to your AI-generated reply. The reason there is no famine, nothing even close to famine, is specifically because of the non-traumatic death rates, so let's talk specifically about the death rates. This was all your AI response shared on the death rates: "Death stats are patchy because no one’s allowed in to verify fully, but even with what we have, it’s close enough that a small spike could push it over." This is blatantly false. The numbers from the Gaza MOH would need to be an undercount of less than 1 percent of actual deaths in order for the famine threshold to have been met. Even studies that claim the Gaza MoH is massively undercounting the numbers still provide estimates that are well below the famine threshold. There is zero evidence whatsoever that anything close to the famine threshold has been met as it relates to mortality, and all the available evidence suggests mortality is far below the threshold.

@ShawnReynolds To be fair the GHM deaths are only from acute malnutrition whereas for famine, all non-violent deaths are counted, so if someone gets a heart attack and dies and them not having enough of whatever vitamin was part of the reason that counts. However, even there the best numbers from Spagat are off by more than a factor of 10. See here:

https://x.com/NuritBaytch/status/1966432334254612815

@nathanwei I checked the manual quoted in the tweet. The portion it is referring to is this: "According to the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Analysis, the CDR should not include trauma-related deaths, but should include deaths due to unknown causes." Elsewhere, the IPC says deaths that are counted for a famine declaration are deaths "due to lack of food consumption on its own or due to the interaction between inadequate food consumption and disease." It seems to be that non-violent deaths that are known to be unrelated to food consumption would not be counted, but that's a small distinction.

@ShawnReynolds I agree that the IPC counts non-violent deaths. The point is that the IPC counted violent deaths! They cited the Spagat et al paper incorrectly!

@nathanwei Hamas is a puppet to Israel

From the beginning I always thought this had an extremely high chance of resolving YES, much in the same way that the question “Will I support Flat Earth theories after talking to Manifold?” would also probably resolve YES. Not because it’s true, but by communicating that you’re entertaining the question when the question is so lopsided, you are also communicating your beliefs on the subject.

@Balasar Polls on Manifold showed 2:1 in support of Israel.

@nathanwei lol do you just make things up https://manifold.markets/TheAllMemeingEye/do-you-support-israel-or-palestine

@Balasar

https://manifold.markets/Quadrifold/in-the-current-global-conflicts-sce

https://manifold.markets/nathanwei/which-side-are-you-more-sympathetic

@nathanwei These are ancient. Most people, even just a year ago, were profoundly ignorant of the details of the conflict. Israel has done an extraordinary job of shielding its history from scrutiny, especially in the US, until recently. As recently as four years ago, I know I was completely ignorant of things such as the Nakba, the details of the situation in the West Bank, and the extraordinary lengths that the Israeli far right has gone to prevent peace, up to and including the assassination of its own moderate prime minister. The recent poll is surely more reflective of an enlightened Manifold than those that arose in the beginning of the war.

@Balasar I don't think the Rabin assassination prevented peace. After that, Barak offered peace. The Palestinians continue to reject peace: https://thirdnarrative.org/palestinians-still-reject-clinton-parameters/ ... they are clear about not wanting a two-state solution.

The situation in the West Bank sucks, but Israel cannot withdraw lest it become another Gaza. Netanyahu was right about the Gaza withdrawal.

I think a lot of people like @SemioticRivalry and @MarcusAbramovitch have just stopped using the website. I know Semiotic Rivalry is busy making money on Polymarket. I also think people who are still paying attention to the conflict are more likely to be critical of Israel.

@nathanwei To say that Barak came after Rabin is disingenuous at best. The Rabin assassination is considered the most successful assassination in history for a reason. After Rabin, and before Barak, (if you ignore Peres) came Netanyahu who did extraordinary damage to Oslo by damaging Israel’s long-term commitment to the peace process. It is impossible to say that after Rabin, Israel ever took peace seriously because they have habitually elected the person who has made it his entire life’s goal to prevent it.

I do agree that people who support Israel are more likely to avoid thinking about the conflict, after all, it’s much easier to avoid any residual cognitive dissonance that way.

@Balasar And before Rabin came Shamir. Rabin didn’t even offer a two state solution. Barak did. Arafat said no. Read the piece. Netanyahu in the 90s didn’t block the two state solution lol.

@nathanwei Again, this is just straightforwardly disingenuous. Netanyahu did much to damage Oslo in the 90s. He called it a “historic mistake”, insisted on delaying numerous commitments made by his predecessor, all while expanding the settlement project. The Hebron Protocol was coupled with heavy security conditions and Israel essentially abandoned its obligations under the Wye River Memorandum by withdrawing almost nowhere. By the time Barak came around four years later, it was already a stalled process as the settlement situation had gotten worse, not better, and Israel had continued on its endless quest of creeping dispossession.

@Balasar Of course Netanyahu stalled Oslo and expanded settlements. I don’t dispute it. But it’s not so relevant. It didn’t stop Barak from offering a two state solution after he beat Netanyahu. The Palestinians insist on destroying Israel and don’t accept the two state solution. The Pa always puts weasel words on the “right of return”. Israel withdrew from Gaza and looked what happened.

https://thirdnarrative.org/palestinians-still-reject-clinton-parameters/

@Balasar The main reason there has been an anti-Israel shift in 2025 is not because of any details of the conflict, and it is not because people suddenly became more educated. It is that Trump became president, and implemented a more vigorously pro-Israel stance than Biden, which made it easier to polarize the issue on partisan lines. Democrats who were ambivalent about the issue while Biden was president became polarized against it as part of their anti-Trump associations. Once you understand social psychology, you realize that everything is a team sport, including politics.

@ShawnReynolds I don’t think that’s the reason for the vibe shift on Manifold. I think that a lot of the users who are fantastic forecasters and understand the world got bored and left the site, and a lot of people who aren’t good at Bayesian reasoning came back instead.

@SemioticRivalry and @MarcusAbramovitch and @jacksonpolack are not active anymore.

@nathanwei That's definitely possible, I'm not so familiar with the users on Manifold.

@Balasar this is a great point

@nathanwei when the pole is centered around what the app is believing and will be resolved based on what they end up, believing on their subjective view, then it completely undermine any credibility to what you just said, it’s two to one because people knew that this person was gonna be distasteful and not there in their reasoning, it’s clear that they are bias towards one side, and I guarantee you that a lot of people like myself ended up betting on the side that they knew that they were gonna pick not the side that they necessarily supported here.

@GageMason Huh? That's a non sequitur. I was commenting about an earlier poll, not this market.

@nathanwei oh, true

@Balasar How is the Rabin assassination the most successful assassination in history? Who considers it that? This is nonsense. Rabin was going to lose to Netanyahu by a lot. Instead Peres barely lose to Netanyahu, and Barak later beat Netanyahu and offered the Clinton Parameters.

The idea that there is a not that far away timeline where the Palestinians accept a two-state solution is pretty obviously wrong. Why do you think you hear chants about river to the sea at every protest?

@nathanwei chants could be just from western people, who were learning the most recognisible motto and repeating it.

@Henry38hw It’s also from Palestinians