https://manifold.markets/PhatFree/will-texas-have-blackouts-this-wint#ZdK0pSf1IHVNcILRhJTc suffers from an ambiguity around what constitues a "city".

Texas has more than 1,200 incorporated cities. They range in size from Houston, with more than 2.3 million residents, to over 400 towns with populations of fewer than 1,000.

By this definition, you can easily find “large scale or rolling blackouts” in "multiple cities" almost any week of the year. e.g., a "city" of 30 households can all lose power due to a single downed power line. It would be very strange if there were not frequently 2 of 1200 cities concurrently experiencing blackouts.

I've asked for someone to propose two numbers here:

1. A numerical threshold for “city” size and

2. % without power to be considered “large scale”

This market will resolve to YES if someone puts forth 2 such numbers that differentiate the outages in Feb 2021 and the week of Jan 29th 2023 from all but 2 other calendar weeks (Sunday-Saturday, since that is the convention in Texas) in the interim.

In other words, the criteria need to show that in the ~104 weeks between Feb 10 2021 and Feb 10 2023, 100 of those weeks would not be considered to have “large scale or rolling blackouts” in "multiple cities" using the criteria, while the week starting Jan 29th 2023 would.

Important notes:

• The numerical threshold must be something that can be reliably measured and computed as a percentage. e.g., most outages are reported in "customers" affected. For most metro areas, population should correlate closely to customers, such that % customers without power should be within 1% point of % population without power. Outliers with a large difference (e.g., a town with a population of 5,0000, but 10,000 "customers" due to a glut of industry, or some sort of accounting shenanigans/oddness) will be excluded.

• Multiple "cities" must be affected. Your criteria determine what is a city.

An example:

1. A city has a population of 500,000 or more.

2. 10% or more of the "customers" without power is "large scale"

Criteria 1 limits the cities to Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, and El Paso. On Feb 2 2023 ~200k of 543k Austin Energy Customers were without power, or around 37%. This meets criteria 2, but Austin was the only city according to criteria 1 that was affected.

Someone may very well run the numbers and find the intersection of city population and % outage that perfectly divides the groups as I have outlined them. I would be very happy with this outcome because it means we can find a way to resolve questions like the linked market instead of getting into unhelpful disputes over what speicfic words mean, that cannot be objectively resolved.

Also, feel free to vent or complain in the comments here.

Close date updated to 2023-02-03 10:51 am

Close date updated to 2023-02-17 11:59 pm