This will be resolved based on my judgement of the vibes of top Rationalist voices in 4 years.
If through their Tweets and Substack posts, I get the sense that they are happy with Trump's reforms, and that what got done was extremely impactful, vastly outweighs any harms, and was more sizable than what other post WWII presidents have accomplished, then I will resolve YES. Otherwise, NO.
EDIT: This would be judged from 1960 with JFK (68 years before 2028).
Update 2025-02-05 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Majority Requirement Clarification:
A majority of prominent rationalists must hold the view that Trump’s second term was the most positively impactful since 1960.
The final judgment will consider the vibes of rationalists across a spectrum, where the intensity of their views is weighed—if the core (top) voices are more fervent, they can outweigh a larger number of mildly opposing voices.
The process involves assessing gradations among rationalists, meaning that the consensus reflects the overall tendency rather than a strict headcount.
1,000People are also trading
It seems like everyone on the Tech Right is admitting they fucked up. Even people like Elon who were hardly rationalist to begin with are folding. Razib Khan said voting for him was a mistake and he's firmly right-wing.
Opinions from non left-wing rationalists/postrats/rat-adjacent people:
Scott Alexander - extremely negative
Richard Hanania - extremely negative
Bryan Caplan - extremely negative
Aella - negative
Razib Khan - negative
Robin Hanson - negative
Zvi Mowshowitz - doesn't talk about Trump much anymore, but anything I can find seems negative
Cremieux - unclear, seems positive but after defending Trump for a few months he's mostly gone silent on it again
The only good reforms I can think of are on nuclear energy (but his order only recommended reconsidering LNT, didn't force anything), criminal law database and DEI/affirmative action. Everything else he's done ranges from useless to terrible.
Genuinely can't see this happening at all unless Vance gets lucky and makes some declaration on AI that ends up being good in rationalists' eyes, and it's so impactful that it outweighs everything else, which I'd definitely place at <5%
For YES betters, are you betting on you thinking it actually happened, or just that James is biased?
@ShadowyZephyr If AGI happens in the next three years, it's at least plausible that whatever Trump chooses for that could outweigh his mistakes.
I personally don't think that's likely, but I know some of the YES bettors do.
I really really do NOT see why SO MANY smart people didn't see Trump for who he was from his first term. Nytimes was completely totally right on this
@makeworld What is the most likely scenario where this resolves YES? Maybe if AI works out as well as anyone could hope, and Trump somehow gets some of the credit?
@MartinRandall Arguably no. He's already omniscient, so he never needs to update his beliefs based on new evidence.
I'm slightly regretting not buying no when I first saw and commented on this but I still stand by it being a questionable bet due to how obviously biased @JamesGrugett is.
@Tenoke Prediction markets are no fun if you're never willing to go out on a limb and be wrong. The most impressive people are the ones who change their minds in light of evidence.
@dreev That's neither here nor there. Going on a limb is fine. Doesnt mean you shouldn't account tor having a heavily biased person in charge of resolution.
@Tenoke I'm saying James is willing to be wrong and this was never a concern with being in this market
@dreev many markets come down to the specifics of the resolution criteria. This market's resolution criteria are explicitly about his interpretation, so it's clearly relevant. He is also clearly biased. You can be biased and willing to be wrong!
@Tenoke I guess I'm just disagreeing that James is biased in that sense. I mean, I think he was wrong, or, rather, miscalibrated on Pr(Trump good). And he's betting in this market so he has a conflict of interest. Nonetheless, he's not going to weasel on the resolution or cherrypick who counts as rationalists or anything. If, as I expect, it ends up perfectly clear that Trump was bad (and thus prominent rationalists naturally agree) then James will concede. I'm happy to bet on a derivative market to that effect if you want to create one.
PS: As a sanity check we could just ask @JamesGrugett if he agrees that the current vibes are that Trump is bad so far and that something surprising will have to happen for this to somehow end up resolving YES.
Bryan Caplan, who I never predicted would like Trump, had seemed one of the most likely to call him the lesser evil. But today he calls the Trump administration "demagogic nonsense" and "a horrific spectacle of policy dysfunction". And then further confirms that even if you think traditional politics is a horror show, a demagogue like Trump is turning that up to eleven.
@dreev I think his conclusion is not that Trump is more harmful than previous administrations, just more obviously so. (Though of course that's still not positive for this market.)
But also, is Caplan a rationalist? He seems to distance himself somewhat in this post: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/04/whats_wrong_wit_22.html
@TimothyJohnson5c16 Probably fair to say he distances himself, but maybe only somewhat. There's another post of his where he closens himself to Effective Altruism. Bryan's friend and colleague Robin Hanson definitely counts as a rationalist. I'm looking through Robin's Twitter, and seeing plenty of anti-trumpiness. Calling Trump policy bad, and that the odds are against the theory that Trump's tariffs are strategic moves that will induce net positive outcomes. Also more confusing takes but overall pretty 👎 on Trump from Robin Hanson, I'd say.
Hanania is the most right-wing rationalist-adjacent person I can think of and he recently wrote a post about how deeply corrupt and selfish Trump is.
Sam Harris is another rationalist-adjacent person who's extremely anti-Trump.
Eliezer Yudkowsky seems to have said the other day that Thiel was wrong to support Trump.
Scott Aaronson counts as a prominent rationalist, I believe. At least he praises the community up one side and down the other. And he's the most extreme anti-Trumper I know. See his "Never-Trump From Here to Eternity" FAQ. And he's only gotten more anti-Trump since then, even when he admits to small points of agreement. (Scott Aaronson is really impressively intellectually honest.)
On the other side there's Liron Shapira saying that (even though Trump did things that should've been disqualifying) bringing on Elon Musk "to bring competence & transparency to government is the shakeup we need". Anyone else?
@dreev I think we need a baseline to compare against. Not counting the current term, who would rationalists say had the most positive impact? Maybe LBJ for passing civil rights and Medicare?
Trump’s changes are just making the government work worse, not more efficiently