Will it be shown that NYT employees' cats kill more birds annually than SpaceX launches? (Proven before 2025)
Will it be shown that NYT employees' cats kill more birds annually than SpaceX launches? (Proven before 2025)
78
10kṀ44k
resolved May 13
Resolved
NO

Inspired by this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/us/politics/spacex-wildlife-texas.html

This market resolves to YES if clear and convincing evidence is provided to me that resolves the following hypothesis in the affirmative, before January 1, 2025.

"Let N be the number of birds killed each year by all of the cats owned by all of the employees of the New York Times. Let X be the number of birds killed each year by SpaceX rocket launches. N is greater than X."

"Clear and convincing evidence" here represents evidence that is higher than a mere preponderance, but is short of "beyond a reasonable doubt." To put it in loose probabilistic terms, anything that makes me 75% sure.

I will know it when I see it, but here's what I would expect to convince me:

  • A robust estimate with a clear methodology

  • Relies on cited sources and backed up by factual data

  • Where it relies on statistical estimation, those are well cited too and based on reasonable and highly probably and backed in turn by well accepted statistics

If insufficient evidence is provided to me before the expiration date, this resolves to NO.

If sufficient evidence is provided to me before the expiration date, this resolves to YES.


I will state for the record that at this time I genuinely don't know which way this is likely to resolve.

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See comments for further clarifications, but among them is this:

A "SpaceX rocket launch" is basically anything that involves a rocket that belongs to SpaceX. Typically that means firing, but it doesn't matter if it actually gets off the pad, let alone into space. Exploding counts, so does falling over without exploding or even igniting, and for the sake of clarity, basically anything that happens that kills a bird that directly involves a rocket.

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