Welcome to 2024

This is the farthest into the future anyone has ever gone

Clover is in my chair again.

Thank you for reading Telling the Future! In my first post of the New Year I look back at the last two years and look forward to 2024.

Happy New Year! Telling the Future celebrates its second anniversary in February—my launch post was my prediction that Russia was about to invade Ukraine—and recently passed 50,000 views. There’s an incredible amount of beautifully-written and insightful commentary you could read, and I’m extremely grateful you’ve chosen to read what I write.

Two weeks after my first post, Russia did invade Ukraine and began the war that continues to this day. Year-over-year inflation hit 9% in the US over the summer, leading the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to more than 5% in response. The US Supreme Court held in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the US Constitution does not confer a right to obtain an abortion, overruling long-standing earlier decisions in both Roe. v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans failed to retake the Senate and won the House only narrowly—doing much less well than the party out of power normally does—in large part because of anger at the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs.

Last year, generative AI made a series of impressive breakthroughs. Russian President Vladimir Putin survived an abortive mutiny led by Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prighozin, who was assassinated two months later. Hamas launched a series of coordinated attacks against Israel, murdering and abducting roughly a thousand civilians. Israel’s counterattacks on Gaza led to the deaths of thousands more civilians. Former president Donald Trump was indicted for 91 felonies in four different criminal cases—and was found by a jury in a civil trial to have raped journalist E. Jean Carroll—but remains the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. President Biden, meanwhile, remains historically unpopular with voters in large part due to dissatisfaction with the US economy, even though inflation now appears to be under control and unemployment remains low. It was the hottest year ever recorded.

History is not over. Telling the Future tries to make it more intelligible and less surprising. Forecasting is one of the best ways to make sense of things as they happen, because it requires thinking carefully in advance about why they might happen. Some of the events of the last two years—like the invasion of Ukraine and the outcome of the 2022 election—I saw coming. Others—like the US being able to reduce inflation without a recession—surprised me. But my most popular posts last year were actually the ones that looked at bigger-picture issues, like what it’s possible to predict and impact of technological change:

This upcoming year will see a series of pivotal elections—starting with general elections in Taiwan this week—with far-reaching implications for the prospects of global democracy. I remain convinced that unless Biden becomes seriously ill, he is likely to win the US presidency again in 2024 as satisfaction with the US economy increases and voters take the prospect of another Trump presidency more seriously. Trump’s legal issues will turn off more independent and moderate voters while the fact that abortion access will be on the ballot in key states will help Democrats. Democrats have a good chance of retaking the House, but are nevertheless likely to lose control of the Senate. The war in Ukraine will likely continue at least into 2025. In future posts, I’ll look at how the Israel-Hamas war might develop, the prospects for conflict between China and Taiwan, and whatever surprises the new year has in store for us. I’m looking forward to another year of forecasting with you.

Help me reach 1,000 subscribers by sharing Telling the Future! Forecasts from recent posts are available on Fatebook here. Next week I’ll post a new episode of my podcast in which I talk with Metaculus Product Director Tom Liptay about how Metaculus scores forecasts. Telling the Future depends entirely on reader support—and won’t be able to continue without it—so, if you can, please consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you for your support!