Francois Chollet said that there WILL be a lynching of immigrants in the USA before "this is over". Not sure what "this" is, we can at least assume by the end of 2025 is a reasonable time limit to make a prediction.
So the question is, will there be ANY lynchings in 2025?
The last official lynching was in 1981. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Michael_Donald
Not wanting to just write Francois off as a shreiking hysterical progressive who has spent the last 11 years getting bused to sunny Mountain View Googleplex to enjoy the cafeteria, security, and highest IQ lowest crime immigrants in human history while professing to know about the situation in Springfield Ohio, I thought i'd give him and some of the voters of his post a chance to put their mana where their memetic intuition is.
Francois, please, vote! Let the world know how confident you are about your prediction, that you're not just saying non-sense on Twitter to get a rise out of people.
1,000
3.00The recent death of Javion Magee seems suspicious and could end up meeting the criteria defined below by @MattF.
Police allegedly have footage of him buying the rope at a Walmart. The story seems to still be under investigation.
"The young man was not dangling from a tree. He was not swinging from a tree," the sheriff continued. "The rope was wrapped around his neck. It was not a noose. There was not a knot in the rope, so therefore, it was not a lynching here in Vance County."
Either way, I will strictly abide by the wikipedia article mentioned to resolve this, any debate on what exactly constitutes a lynching will have to be brought up with the editors of that wikipedia page. I think the definition they're using on wikipedia seems fair enough to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lynching_victims_in_the_United_States
@Lorxus Cool beans.
Do you have a constructive alternative method to propose to resolve this or do you not want to contribute to the concept of prediction markets being used to force people to put stake in the accuracy of their claims about reality?
Given that one lynching event seems to occur every ten years in the USA, a probability around 10% is (potentially) representing a belief that JD Vance, Trump, etc. have had no significant impact on changing the odds of a lynching happening in the USA in the coming year.
What is your definition of "lynching"? Your linked Wikipedia article goes to this page, which gives many more examples since the 1981 incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lynching_victims_in_the_United_States
@SaviorofPlant Great point and thanks for looking that up.
How about this, if a new event (which occurred starting from September 1, 2024) ends up on that wikipedia page by the end of 2025 (we check on Jan 1, 2026, as editors may fight over a certain event), we'll resolve it as Yes.
A much more clear cut way to resolve this than others. Doesn't even have to be of an immigrant.
I think we can agree that what Francois is describing will happen would definitely end up on that wikipedia page.
@SaviorofPlant Something very likely to happen indeed. I think we just have a set time (Jan 1, 2026, 12:00AM PST) and whatever the official wikipedia page shows at that time resolves it.
Can't think of any other way to resolve it that is timely and doesn't devolve into us here just rehashing the same political talking points that would be motivating the editing war itself.
Note: Given that wikipedia editors (by my perception) lean towards progressive political views, I think this defaults in favor of Francois' prediction (and the Yes vote for this, unless you're voting Yes expecting a lynching to happen that would be bad optics for (my estimation) wikipedia's progressive leaning editors).
@MattF This seems exploitable by someone on Manifold editing the article at 11:59 to get their preferred outcome. It's not a protected article
@SaviorofPlant Do you have a recommendation for how we should resolve it?
How about: The first week long period after Jan 1 2026 with a consistent page answer.
@MattF That works, could also just use discretion (resolve based on jan 1 but if someone keeps trying to add something and it keeps getting reverted, ignore it)