ClaimsScott Alexander

“At the beginning of every year, I make predictions.”

Scott Alexander, blogger 6 January 2017 Predictions For 2017 (Slate Star Codex)

Factual Their own work or organisation

Scott Alexander makes predictions at the beginning of every year.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

The evidence is the person's or their organisation's own records.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 2017-01-06. True: Scott Alexander published a set of predictions for the coming year at or near the start of each year in his blogging history up to 2017 (e.g. SSC posts of predictions for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, plus any earlier ones on LiveJournal). Mostly true: he did so in nearly every year, with one gap or one set published well after the start of the year. Mixed: he made yearly predictions in only about half of the relevant years. Mostly false: he made such predictions only once or twice. False: there is no record of him making beginning-of-year predictions.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (4)

  1. E1 Predictions For 2014 Slate Star Codex · 28 January 2014 Own record

    “Unless otherwise specified, predictions are about whether something happens before the end of 2014”
  2. E2 (Late) Predictions for 2015 Slate Star Codex · 13 June 2015 Own record

    “I was supposed to institute a tradition of making predictions at the beginning of each year, then grading them at the end to test my calibration.”
  3. E3 2014 Predictions: Calibration Results Slate Star Codex (Scott Alexander's blog) · 1 January 2015 Own record

    “Last year in January I made some predictions for 2014 and gave my calibration level for each.”
  4. E4 2014 Predictions: Calibration Results Slate Star Codex (Scott Alexander's blog) · 1 January 2015 Own record

    “2015 predictions coming soon.”

Reasoning

E1 and E5 show that a set of 2014 predictions was posted in January 2014. E2 shows the 2015 set came out in June 2015, labelled "(Late)", and its own wording says the tradition was something he "was supposed to institute". That makes 2015 a set published well after the start of the year. None of the evidence covers 2016, 2017 or any earlier LiveJournal predictions, so it can't be determined whether this was a single late year (mostly true) or there were further gaps (mixed or worse).

Cite this claim

Scott Alexander, “Scott Alexander makes predictions at the beginning of every year.” (said 6 January 2017). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_9206e95f569b, method 0.1.0+8bea457b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_9206e95f569b

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Scott Alexander, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Scott Alexander

  1. Mostly true Factual 5 October 2026
    “Reader Nikita Sokolsky has completed his work getting some extra Fatima documents from Portugal and translating them into English.”

    Reader Nikita Sokolsky has finished obtaining extra Fatima documents from Portugal and translating them into English.

  2. Resolved true Factual 5 October 2026
    “Rob Ennals, who made this year’s book review contest site, has gathered the reviews from earlier years into epubs here.”

    Rob Ennals, who made this year's ACX book review contest site, has gathered reviews from earlier years into epubs.

  3. Resolved true Factual 10 December 2024
    “There’s a good interview with Skarbek in last month’s issue of Asterisk, I think it will be online shortly.”

    Last month's issue of Asterisk (November 2024) contains an interview with Skarbek, which Scott thinks will be online shortly.

  4. Resolved true Factual 20 February 2023
    “Things felt so fuzzy that I (partly) abandoned my usual clear-resolution probabilistic predictions for total guesses.”

    In 2018 Scott Alexander partly abandoned his usual clear-resolution probabilistic predictions for rough guesses in his five-year predictions.

  5. Resolved true Factual 14 March 2022
    “Also last month, I suggested Manifold Markets have a loan feature to help boost investment in long-term markets.”

    In February 2022 Scott Alexander suggested that Manifold Markets add a loan feature to boost investment in long-term markets.

All of them

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.