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Bet 9

Duration 4 years (02017-02020)


“A BIOTERROR OR BIOERROR WILL LEAD TO ONE MILLION CASUALTIES IN A SINGLE EVENT
WITHIN A SIX MONTH PERIOD STARTING NO LATER THAN DEC 31 02020.” DETAILED TERMS »

PREDICTOR
Martin Rees

CHALLENGER
Steven Pinker


STAKES $400

will go to Givewell if Rees wins,
or Givewell if Pinker wins.


REES'S ARGUMENT

Biotechnology is plainly advancing rapidly, and by 2020 there will be
thousands-even millions-of people with the capability to cause a catastrophic
biological disaster. My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but
individual weirdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer
viruses. Even if all nations impose effective regulations on potentially
dangerous technologies, the chance of an active enforcement seems to me as small
as in the case of the drug laws.

By "bioerror", I mean something which has the same effect as a terror attack,
but rises from inadvertance rather than evil intent.




PINKER'S ARGUMENT

1. Cognitive biases inflate the subjective odds of disaster: If a scenario is
imaginable, it seems probable.
2. Moral market forces also distort the odds: Pessimists are seen as serious and
responsible, optimists as complacent and naive. Because of 1 & 2, most doomsday
predictions are false (thermonuclear war between the US and USSR, Y2K disaster,
the population bomb, resource wars, weekly 9/11-scale terrorist attacks, etc.).
3. Bayesian base rate: If an extreme and specific category of event has never
before happened, the odds are stacked against it. The only successful past cases
of bioterror are the Rajneeshee cult (751 cases, 0 deaths) and the Anthrax
mailing (5 deaths). The Soviet-era anthrax bioweapon leak killed another 66.
4. Pool of potential perpetrators: The number of people eager for senseless
destruction is small (otherwise we'd have daily bombings, mass shootings,
sabotage, etc. in every city, rather than sporadic headline-worthy ones).
Multiply by the fraction with the knowledge, skill, intelligence, and discipline
to engineer a superbug (as opposed to the bumbling underwear-bomber and Tsarnaev
Brother types). The pool may be smaller still: I suspect that being very smart
lowers the odds of enjoying mass death and mayhem.
5. Murphy's Law: Multiply further by the fraction who escape detection and
accidents (e.g., being stricken by one's own bioweapon), and whose plan succeeds
despite the unpredictability of epidemiological processes.
6. Multiply further by the chance that the Black Hat will defeat the White Hats,
namely the world's medical and epidemiological networks, who would combat an
outbreak with containment, vaccines, antibiotics, etc.
The product is not 0, but I don't think it's high.
Granted, I have the benefit of 15 years of hindsight: I need only three more
outbreak-free years. But Sir Martin has the benefit of unforeseen advances in
synthetic biology, such as CRISPR/Cas9.
We'd need definitions of "casualty" (death, permanent disability, or just
infection?), "bioterror" (state-sponsored? apolitical vengeance/spree killing?)
and "bioerror" (I assume a mere lack of preparedness doesn't count). But that
shouldn't be too hard.

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DETAILED TERMS

Casualties will be defined by WHO, CDC, or BPHS, whoever has the highest
numbers. Casualties should ideally include "victims requiring hospitalization"
and not include indirect deaths caused by the pathogen, although ultimately Long
Now will rely on the criteria set by the above organizations for determining
casualties to adjudicate this bet.

UPDATED ADJUDICATION TERMS, MAY 10th 02022:

As of spring 2022, the bet is unresolved pending uncertainty as to whether
SARS-Cov-2 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in which case it would
count as an instance of "bioerror" and Rees would win the bet. The problem is
how to decide when this issue is resolved according to some a priori and
objective criteria, given the necessary uncertainties, including possible
attempts by the Chinese government to hobble an open investigation.

We have agreed upon the following resolution. The prediction site "Metaculus"
encourages bets on many resolvable forecasts, not just by one bettor on each
side but by a cashless prediction market. They they have an open forecast
"Health agencies claim COVID from lab by '25":

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3682/health-agencies-to-claim-lab-escape-by-25/

They make this precise in the form "Before the end of 2024 will at least two
public health agencies claim that COVID-19 more likely than not originated in a
laboratory?", and make it still more precise in their "Resolution":

"This questions resolves positively if, before the end of 2024 at least two of
the public health agencies listed below claim that it is more likely than not
that the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus originated from a Chinese virology
laboratory. For the purpose of this question, we consider only statements by the
following public health agencies:…" [which they proceed to list].

This strikes us as a reasonable way to operationalize our bet, not just because
it makes all the terms resolvable, but because the decision will be made for us
when Metaculus announces its resolution.

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