Swift Centre
Article
Swift Centre is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between October 18, 2022 and May 13, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Swift Centre is a lot like Samotsvety; they’re a collection of top forecasters”; “Michael Story of the Swift Centre , a group trying to get policymakers to pay attention”; “Swift Centre has a forecasting piece on the US elections”. It most often appears alongside Biden, Manifold, Metaculus.
Metadata
- Category: Organizations
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: October 18, 2022
- Last seen: May 13, 2024
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Biden (4 shared issues)
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- Manifold (4 shared issues)
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- Metaculus (4 shared issues)
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- Polymarket (4 shared issues)
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- Ukraine (4 shared issues)
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- Kalshi (3 shared issues)
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- OpenAI (3 shared issues)
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- PredictIt (3 shared issues)
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- 538 (2 shared issues)
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- Bibi (2 shared issues)
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- CFTC (2 shared issues)
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- Commodity Futures Trading Commission (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Several additional plaintiffs I can’t find good information about You can find the complaint here. The plaintiffs write: The [CFTC’s action], without explanation or other indication of reasoned decisionmaking, without “written notice of the facts or conduct which may warrant” the Revocation, and without providing anyone “an opportunity to demonstrate or achieve compliance” with the terms of No-Action Relief or other requirements, violates the Administrative Procedure Act. 5 U.S.C. §§ 558, 706. Among other things, the Revocation is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, [and/or] otherwise not in accordance with law” and occurred “without observance of procedure required by law.” The Court should “hold unlawful and set aside” the Revocation, including its command that contracts that would otherwise turn on events occurring after February 2023 be prematurely liquidated. 5 U.S.C. § 706. The Court also should enter a preliminary and then permanent injunction against the prescriptions in the Revocation requiring the liquidation of contracts by February 2023, including contracts that concern the 2024 elections, well before they would ordinarily mature. I am not a lawyer, but it sounds kind of like they’re saying “the decision was bad, and the Administrative Procedure Act says regulators shouldn’t do bad things”. I am split between the part of me which hates government regulators doing bad things, and the part of me which feels like this is how you get a cover-your-ass-ocracy that never does anything at all without fifteen layers of paperwork and ten trillion dollars per action. Whatever. At least this time it’s in my favor. Of course there are prediction markets about it: Source: Insight Prediction Nuclear Warcasting, Part 2 Samotsvety Forecasting is a team made of top prediction market players and tournament winners, vaguely affiliated with effective altruism, who make predictions in the public interest. Earlier this year, they got attention for forecasting the risk of nuclear war - in particular, they said there was an a 0.01% per month chance of London getting nuked this spring. Since then, most of the fear has crystallized into a specific scenario. Suppose Russia is losing very badly in Ukraine. Putin, fearing a coup or revolution at home if he gives up, decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon, ie a “small” nuke more suited to winning battles than destroying cities. He nukes a Ukrainian battlefield position. The West is enraged at this violation of the nuclear taboo and feels like it needs to respond decisively - maybe by nuking something on Russia’s side, or through some other act of extreme escalation. Then Russia feels like they need to respond, and eventually it escalates to strikes on major cities and global nuclear war. There are reasons for doubt. Tactical nukes wouldn’t really be useful in Ukraine; the battle lines are too spread out and there’s no single place where a nuclear explosion could take out a substantial portion of Ukraine’s forces. In the past, nuclear powers have accepted lost wars gracefully rather than turning to nukes. And the Russians deny it, and saying this is all just Western propaganda intended to scare people. Amid this uncertainty, Samotsvety has published an update: now they are at 16% chance that “Russia uses any type of nuclear weapon in Ukraine in the next year”, and 0.02% per month of a strike on London. Although they didn’t mention it this time, they previously said the risk of a strike on San Francisco was a little over half that of London; I don’t know if that’s changed. See also Dan Keys’ comment here for some skepticism of Samotsvety’s process. Swift Centre is a lot like Samotsvety; they’re a collection of top forecasters brought together by EA to make important predictions. They also took a swing at the nuclear question, and said 9.1% chance of a hostile nuclear detonation in Europe in the next six months. They didn’t calculate the risk that this would spread to global war, but they did discuss how different scenarios would bring the risk up or down: One of my hopes for forecasting is that it eventually becomes so well-validated that decision-makers can take these kinds of considerations into account: “Should we sent ATACMS missiles to Ukraine? It would have such-and-such benefits, but also increase the risk of nuclear escalation by 3.6%, is it worth it?” We can’t directly compare Samotsvety and Swift because they’re predicting over different time periods. But assuming that there’s more risk in the next six months than in the six months after that, I think Samotsvety is a little higher but they’re not embarrassingly far off. Metaculus is a bit more optimistic than either, believing there’s only a 4% chance of detonation in Ukraine in 2023 and a 7% chance of any use in the next ~year. Max Tegmark is going much higher than anyone else and says 16% chance of global nuclear war. Kalshi Applies For Election Markets Kalshi is a regulated and fully-legal prediction market with good lobbyists and a compliance team. This means the CFTC probably won’t randomly shut them down one day. But it also means they can only create new markets with CFTC permission. In July, Kalshi asked the CFTC for permission to make midterm election prediction markets - specifically, which party will win control of the House and Senate. The CFTC has said they will make a decision by October 28 (which doesn’t leave much time for predicting to happen before the November 8 election, but I guess it sets a precedent). September was the Request For Comment period, when the CFTC solicited comments from stakeholders about what they should do. Kalshi tried really hard to get lots of people to send in positive assessments - I know this because of how many people asked me “why is the CEO of Kalshi emailing me about this thing?” Their strategy seems to have worked; among the people who wrote to the CFTC in support were: A managing director at JP Morgan
Inline links: additional plaintiffs, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LaYa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0aaec309-35d6-430d-aeaa-b7cab022f4d6_548x215.png, Insight Prediction, Samotsvety Forecasting, Earlier this year, accepted lost wars gracefully, published an update, comment here, Swift Centre, They also took a swing at the nuclear question, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TczM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F702c1236-47d9-4c60-9b99-ab9b2ca320e7_737x377.png, a 4% chance, a 7% chance, 16% chance, In July, they will make a decision by October 28, A managing director at JP Morgan
3: Superforecaster Robert de Neufville interviews Michael Story of the Swift Centre, a group trying to get policymakers to pay attention to (and maybe pay for) good forecasts.
Inline links: interviews Michael Story of the Swift Centre
5: Swift Centre has a forecasting piece on the US elections; spiciest claim is that “replacing Biden won’t help the Democrats”. I notice that this isn’t exactly what the question says - it says the Democrats’ chances are better if Biden is the candidate on Election Day than if he isn’t. But this could be because the Democrats are more likely to replace Biden in a world where things aren’t going their way. I don’t know if this is because they simplified the question in their article, or if this is actually a (slight) mistake.
Inline links: has a forecasting piece on the US elections
One bright spot: both DeepMind (see 8) and OpenAI (see 2.12) recently hired forecasters (Swift Centre for DeepMind, OpenAI still keeping details secret) to predict some features of their AI models. I think this is cool, but it probably owes more to there being a bunch of rationalists at those companies (and rationalists loving forecasting) than to any sign of broader commercial adoption.
1: Swift Centre forecasts that global coal consumption will stay high, despite the standard line that it will decline as cleaner energy comes on line. This is a rare case where superforecasters take a clear position opposed to a mainstream consensus, so I look forward to grading it later.