Scott Alexander 2021 Predictions: Market Prices—Resolution

Last year, I looked at Scott’s forecasts for 2021 and compared them to the market forecasts. Today I went through those forecasts (and Zvi’s * - a buy/​hold/​sell exercise done on Scott’s estimates) added the resolutions and calculated a Brier score and a log-score.

Results were as follows:

BrierLog
Scott0.201.24
Zvi0.160.93
Market0.140.90

So in summary “market” about as good as Zvi and both better than Scott . (Albeit on a pretty small sample of 19 questions). (Lower is better for Brier score and log-score)

Full details can be found here

QuestionScottZviMarketResult
Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than 50%80%80%61%0
Court packing is clearly going to happen (new justices don’t have to be appointed by end of year)5%1%5%0
Yang is New York mayor80%70%70%0
Newsom recalled as CA governor5%5%7%0
Tokyo Olympics happen on schedule70%80%77%1
Major flare-up (significantly worse than anything in past 5 years) in Russia/​Ukraine war32%15%16%0
Netanyahu is still Israeli PM40%25%22%0
Prospera has at least 1000 residents30%30%18%0
GME >$100 (Currently $170)50%50%60%1
Bitcoin above 100K40%23%23%0
Ethereum above 5K50%30%11%0
Ethereum above 0.05 BTC70%55%33%1
Dow above 35K90%50%50%1
…above 37.5K:70%20%20%0
Unemployment above 5%40%50%37%0
Starship reaches orbit60%60%50%0
Greater than 66% of US population vaccinated against COVID50%60%77%1
Vitamin D is generally recognized (eg NICE, UpToDate) as effective COVID treatment30%20%25%0
US approves AstraZeneca vaccine20%20%37%0

* I made a couple of assumptions when calculating Zvi’s probabilities for things where he wasn’t super explicit about his numbers. I will of course update these if asked.