"humanity starts interfacing with alien gods and shit goes really crazy" by 2023-August?
339
936
2K
resolved Aug 4
Resolved
NO

@MichaelTrazzi tweeted on 2022-Dec-04:

enjoy the last few quiet months of your life before humanity starts interfacing with alien gods and shit goes really crazy

Let's push "the last few quiet months" out to include the first 7 months of 2023.

In August of 2023, I will DM Michaël Trazzi on Twitter and ask them if what they see counts as "humanity has started interfacing with alien gods and shit has gone really crazy". If we both agree about whether this "happened", then I'll resolve the market that way.

But if we disagree about whether the event "happened", I'll convert this market into a Keynesian Beauty Contest. I would wait for the price to stabilize, either spending 5+ days at <=5% (resolves "No"), OR spending 5+ days at >=95% (resolves "Yes"). This method will only be used if me and Michaël Trazzi don't agree on whether the event "happened", just as a way to deal with the high ambiguity.

EDIT: Isaac King asks "What if they don't respond or give you an unclear answer?"

If they don't respond or give an unclear answer, then I'll convert it to the KBC.

This is an open "bet" and I will be placing trades.

Update Aug-3rd:
@MichaelTrazzi gave a very thoughtful followup, and has changed his mind, no longer endorsing the wording (for what we currently see). This means we now agree, and this can resolve NO.

Update Aug-2nd:
Since we disagree, we now re-open this question, and begin the rolling 5-day Keynesian Beauty Contest, starting now. Either spending 5+ days at <=5% (resolves "No"), OR spending 5+ days at >=95% (resolves "Yes"), with no particular time limit for this process to reach its conclusion. I will be betting, and describe my reasoning for "No" in this comment.

Update Jul-31st:
Will give Michael time to reply, and if they disagree then we could re-open and then begin the 5+ day rolling countdown. YES seems currently hard to justify, but I want to give a fair chance.

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predicted NO

@MichaelTrazzi gave a very thoughtful followup, and has changed his mind, no longer endorsing the wording (for what we currently see). This means we now agree, and this can resolve NO.

predicted NO

@MarcusAbramovitch @NamesAreHard why don't you ride the KBC up to 95% 🫣

@d I think the market should be NO and also wouldn't touch a KBC :)

sold Ṁ239 of NO

Clearly this is "No" but I don't have any interest in dealing with the KBC.

predicted NO

@MichaelTrazzi says:

"when i basically talk to claude daily and he knows what I need to know about camera stuff / audio / video software & gpt-4 / copilot code for me + other ml automated editing / audio processing: pretty alien god-like. Congress hearings, H100 orders, investments, etc: pretty crazy"

I respond:
"Well, that seems like pretty watered down criteria for "alien gods" / "really crazy". Are you sure you endorse this wording?"

Michael says:

"yes, I think people might have misinterpreted the tweet as alien god meaning "can do basically anything" where I meant it as "something alien with superpowers" which correctly describe current LLMs re really crazy: I endorse things are much crazier than pre-chatGPT"

Personally, these seem like huge downgrades. The "alien gods" is now watered down to "something alien with superpowers" (which could describe lots of organisms on Earth).

And "shit gets really crazy" is watered down to "pretty crazy" and "crazier than pre-chatGPT", etc.

I don't think the original tweet was an accurate description of what we see right now. By a normal interpretation, it was highly exaggerated. So I'm staying a NO bettor.

But since we disagree, we now re-open this question, and begin the rolling 5-day Keynesian Beauty Contest, starting now. Either spending 5+ days at <=5% (resolves "No"), OR spending 5+ days at >=95% (resolves "Yes"), with no particular time limit for this process to reach its conclusion. I will be betting.

predicted YES

@ScroogeMcDuck I think we're definitely interfacing with some crazy stuff and these recent months haven't been quiet but "alien gods" is a huge stretch so im selling my yes

predicted YES

@ScroogeMcDuck There are congressional hearings into whether there are alien spacecraft and a possible room temperature superconductor. I think if we had seen the trailer for Y2023 in December 2022 we would say that it was some crazy shit. Everything seems more normal when you're living it a day at a time.

sold Ṁ2,966 of NO

@ScroogeMcDuck Disappointing from Michael. I think most lives/the world feels arguably quieter/less crazy than they did in Dec 2022. Not participating in a KBC though.

bought Ṁ50 of NO

Agree w/ @MattReardon but staying NO. I think it looks on Michael to claim that the situation is ambiguous than to admit he just got this one wrong.

predicted NO

@OllieBase *looks worse on

sold Ṁ284 of NO

@ScroogeMcDuck I assumed Trazzi would admit he was wrong in good faith but given that he has very blatantly and disappointingly moved the goalposts and this market is now ripe for manipulation I am exiting while most of my profit is still realisable.

After giving it more thoughts, I changed my mind and I wouldn't argue that humanity has (yet) "started interfacing with alien gods" .

I realized that in my first answers to Jotto on twitter I was trying to figure out whether I was thinking (today) that the predictions I had in my head were clearly wrong back in December 2022, and ended up trying to explain what I meant, instead of looking more objectively at it thinking about what people usually mean when they use wording as strong as "alien gods".

Looking at it from a distance I think it's hard to argue in good faith that we have alien "gods" today. I wrote a long-ish thread including more considerations on what I was actually predicting (in my head) back in December 2022 and how I feel about these predictions, but the framing as "alien god" is the main thing.

https://twitter.com/MichaelTrazzi/status/1687158855636332544?s=20

@MichaelTrazzi Appreciate your thoughts.

The big thing about your tweet that got me watching this market to see if people agreed with you wasn’t the “alien gods” part, it was the “enjoy the last few quiet months of your life” which implies that said alien gods were going to do something horribly catastrophic or tremendously world-changing such that we’d never have quiet ever again.

That, even more so than “alien gods”, was a big claim which hasn’t yet panned out.

Maybe the alien gods are room temperature superconductors?

https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-temp-ambient-pre

"If it is real and if we get large bulk chunks of it superconductive energy storage will probably be first. It takes little effort to wrap some copper around a barrel of this stuff. Much less work than the wires that will be needed for better MRI's for example. Once that happens solar power which is already cheaper than fossil energy becomes storable so people will start switching over. The 4 trillion dollar fossil fuel industry goes belly up and these countries will see a large part of their GDP evaporate:"

What if it is maintained that

Humanity started interfacing with something alien god like before 31 July 2023 but it is going to take some more time for things to go really crazy.

predicted NO

I've sent a message to Michael Trazzi, asking if they would say humanity has started interfacing with alien gods and shit has gone really crazy yet.

predicted YES

@ScroogeMcDuck Let's hope it doesn't get intercepted by an alien god.

bought Ṁ0 of NO

The price has spent over a month below 5% but it isn't clear if this could count:

Do you wait for reply then announce outcome of attempted communication and if no reply or disagreement then wait for some stability and only after that can a period start building up towards the 5 day period?

Or in the event of disagreement do you just say stability for over 5 days at extreme value has been reached and resolve it?

bought Ṁ10 of YES

@ChristopherRandles Probably we can't interpret low % in July as indicating the craziness of shit in August.

@MartinRandall yeah but, it is by August so Aug is not relevant July is latest relevant month so using July price data might make more sense?

See also

Let's push "the last few quiet months" out to include the first 7 months of 2023

predicted YES

@ChristopherRandles Hmm, but P(crazy shit|Trazzi and McDuck disagree on base reality) might be different.

predicted YES

I guess closing the market will also stabilize the price... 😭

predicted NO

@ChristopherRandles Good point, I wasn't clear about that part. I suspect the most fair way is to give Michael some time to reply, and if they disagree then we could re-open and then begin the 5+ day rolling countdown. While YES seems hard to justify, I don't want to prematurely resolve.

Ok what does "humanity starts interfacing with alien gods and shit goes really crazy" actually mean? It can't be taken literally, right?

predicted NO

@YoavTzfati In my opinion nothing so dramatic has happened yet, nor anywhere close. Alas, it was an ambiguous prediction.

predicted YES

@YoavTzfati I think it's an indirect reference to cthulhu mythos, e.g. shoggoths and such

predicted NO

@YoavTzfati I think it was intended to be taken nearly literally? The implication is that AI would be the "alien gods", so I interpreted it as "nearing singularity/post-scarcity/something that changes the life of every human".