Will it be shown that NYT employees' cats kill more ENDANGERED birds annually than SpaceX launches? (Proven before 2025)
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This is a parallel market to the other one:
https://manifold.markets/LarsDoucet/will-it-be-shown-that-nyt-employees

Identical in all ways except ONE -- the birds in question must be on the endangered species list, at a severity higher than "Least concern."

In all other respects the markets are identical, shared text is below:



Inspired by this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/us/politics/spacex-wildlife-texas.html

This market resolves to YES if clear and convincing evidence is provided to me that resolves the following hypothesis in the affirmative, before January 1, 2025.

"Let N be the number of birds killed each year by all of the cats owned by all of the employees of the New York Times. Let X be the number of birds killed each year by SpaceX rocket launches. N is greater than X."

"Clear and convincing evidence" here represents evidence that is higher than a mere preponderance, but is short of "beyond a reasonable doubt." To put it in loose probabilistic terms, anything that makes me 75% sure.

I will know it when I see it, but here's what I would expect to convince me:

  • A robust estimate with a clear methodology

  • Relies on cited sources and backed up by factual data

  • Where it relies on statistical estimation, those are well cited too and based on reasonable and highly probably and backed in turn by well accepted statistics

If insufficient evidence is provided to me before the expiration date, this resolves to NO.

If sufficient evidence is provided to me before the expiration date, this resolves to YES.


I will state for the record that at this time I genuinely don't know which way this is likely to resolve.

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See comments for further clarifications, but among them is this:

A "SpaceX rocket launch" is basically anything that involves a rocket that belongs to SpaceX. Typically that means firing, but it doesn't matter if it actually gets off the pad, let alone into space. Exploding counts, so does falling over without exploding or even igniting, and for the sake of clarity, basically anything that happens that kills a bird that directly involves a rocket.

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No shot this is proven in this timeframe to these standards.

Skimming the list of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_birds_of_the_United_States

, the overlap of bird ranges and where most of the nytimes staff lives is pretty small.


Rocket launches/habitat disturbance is a new threat, the cats got all the birds they could reach years ago.

I think the bulk of the probability is in there never being a scientific study done on this

Honestly, I think most of the reason why this market is 20% lower than the other is that it's much harder to prove the statement when you add in the "endangered" condition (but not much can be done about that.)

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