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2023 predictions thread - Who lives? Who dies? Who tells a story?
2022 post: https://tildes.net/~talk/zus/welcome_to_2022_what_are_your_predictions_for_this_year
2019 post: https://tildes.net/~talk/9fs/what_will_happen_in_2019
HN predictions for 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628
Suggestion: Include confidence score for all of your predictions, try to assign a numeric value. This can be super insightful for review time! Thanks @skybrian for the brilliant idea last year.
Two predictions:
My actual predictions:
My wishlist:
My time traveller predictions (unrated to keep you guessing):
If this happens in 2023, I'm buying you and your girlfriend dinner. Don't care if it comes out of my New York stash: just too important to celebrate.
Heh I have a lot of champagne bottles to send if it does.
Futurama will premiere in 2023 (likely in the second semester). Given its high cultural status and huge following, it's unreasonable to predict that it will be canceled in the same year. At the very least, it will be canceled in 2024 after rounds of negotiation.
They have really streamlined the process
Great find!
For better or worse, they're at Hulu now.
I think you’re premature by a year on this.
Do you think they will wait needlessly another year for it? Or are you saying iPhone 15 won’t be this year?
Their development timelines are usually 4-5 years out and that was before COVID. If they were gonna have USB-C they’d need to have started planning for it in 2019 at the latest.
The EU rule says it takes effect for anything released after 2024 so I wouldn’t expect the first USB-C iPhone until the end of ‘24 or in ‘25.
The "official" war in Ukraine ends (90%), the real question is if it's due to the West being unwilling to continue supporting the country, or someone finally doing something about Putin.
I'll move back to my home state (50%) We're going to start looking at land in 2023. Who knows if we'll find any we like, and if so when we'll be able to build.
Biden dies, completely upending Washington (more than it already is) and Kamala Harris is sworn in as the first female President of the US. (10%)
I actually really like this prognostication. I've always found shallow dialogue to be the most immersion-breaking thing. I'm talkative and curious. I have so many questions. But when I can only ask 1–2 questions at a time, I feel like I have locked-in syndrome.
AI NPCs could make for a magical experience!
I have so many questions to ask NPCs about their world and lore!
The best in-game conversation I had was in Disco Elysium, with a character named Joyce Messier, a corporate rep who's intellectually and philosophically curious and slightly renegade. It's a long, long, very long meandering conversation in which you can ask all sorts of questions and learn about the curious physical reality of the game world.
I actually made ChatGPT generate a quest-giver dialogue and I think the result was pretty cool. Here (the second option is better).
Predictions for 2023:
Thank you very much for this.
Due to crop failures food continues to get more expensive, despire all measures to combat inflation. (80%)
Stock market has a bottoming out that makes 2022's declines look mild. (60%)
Society fails to meaningfully decrease energy consumption to mitigate global warming. (90%)
Kanye West takes his own life, similar to Robin Williams. (10-ish%)
Given his bipolar diagnosis, Kanye West is at a higher risk of suicide than the rest of the population. However, Robin Williams had Lewy body dementia, a neurological illness with dire prognostics. So, while Kanye's suicide is more likely than most, the circumstances surrounding it would be very different than Robin's.
In any case, as someone who had close experiences with death and suicide, predicting suicide sounds too ghoulish for me, as I make an effort to take no pleasure in the suffering of others.
Counterpoint: Vladimir Putin.
I would not take pleasure in the suffering of Vladimir Putin. However, I would take pleasure in the downfall of his regime and the consequences he might endure as a result of the lawful and just actions of international courts.
I do get satisfaction from the correct application of all that is fair and lawful. I do not get satisfaction from murders or suicides.
Chiming in: I also used to be in the same boat as you. And I still believe the default state should be not to celebrate death. I'm certainly grossed out at a large community of people celebrating the growing amount of Russian deaths in the conflict, for example (and many, for the wrong reasons...).
I've come to understand over time that humanity is not universally positive, and some people, much like cancerous cells, are better off being eradicated. So I would celebrate Putin's successful eradication, much like I'd celebrate the successful eradication of a malignant cancer. The latter which, without context, would be just as confusing: "Why are you celebrating the death of cells in your body?"
This is about the view I arrived at, myself.
I used to be in the same boat as you.
Now, I'm more of a "he's earned this much through the pain and suffering the caused others through his actions" typa character. It's not sadistic joy from the suffering of another person: it's a(n admittedly morbid) celebration of a perceived notion of justice.
I'd like to see him stand trial, in Russia or (ideally) in the Hague. I'm not seeing it happen. Unless things fall very right and someone manages to capture him before he reaches for his gun, I'd be perfectly content with him putting a bullet in his brain like his OG-Nazi counterpart did.
Call it ghoulish if you like. As far as I'm concerned, a man in power being unable to cause any more suffering to others is a worthy cause to open a bottle of champagne over.
(For what it's worth, Kanye is a different scale from Putin, but his words still move followers. He's a clear origin for quite a bit of hate crime lately, with people calling his name while denigrating or hurting others. I'd like to see him brought to justice as well.)
Do not mistake me for a pacifist. There are cases in which violence must be employed. The distinction I make is in regard to how I choose to experience those events, or what emotional reaction I deem appropriate.
Much like the cases of Josef Stalin or Adolph Hitler, there is an argument to be made for the assassination of Vladimir Putin. That is primarily a utilitarian, geopolitical consideration.
However, if that happens, I will make an attempt to get satisfaction exclusively from the positive consequences such an act would ensue, and not from a vengeful sentiment. I'll take a step back from the ghoulish pleasure that might come from appreciating their death and suffering in and of themselves.
That choice must not be interpreted as implicit approval of those killed. That is just how I choose to conduct my mental life.
That's a very significant and excellent distinction. I respect it :)
Nor do I, and I specifically avoided calling it suicide, as there's any number of ways to unintentionally cause your own death as well. I only brought it up because, well, the thread title asked for death predictions.
I understand. However, I do find it hard to interpret your words in any other way, given that "taking your own life" generally means suicide, and you compared him to someone that is known to have committed suicide.
That is true, but it was the circumstances (plagued by inner demons) more than the act that I was comparing. In any event, even if what I said comes to pass, I will take no joy from it, it's just something I see as a possibility, given his current trajectory.
I do apologize if I seemed cavalier about the issue, that was certainly never my intent. Any life lost is an opportunity lost.
I owe you 10 € if that happens, 'cause I don't believe it will.
Robin was generous, kind, and eager to make people laugh. Kanye is the opposite of that. I expect them to meet separate fates, as well, even taking the recent backlash into account.
He's got some under-the-hood issues that could take him down that path.
I’m thinking more of an OJ style finale from him.
Also possible.
I'd put it in the 0~10% range. Right now Kanye West is disgraced but still wealthy—though his wealth is now greatly diminished—and can afford his posse of enablers.
I predict he's going to double down (100%) and as a person who values his self-image as he imagines it through the eyes of others, he's going to launch a series of doomed ventures (80%): social network, music streaming, more clothing brands, etc.
But their brands will be toxic and he's going to burn through his wealth. His enablers will leave him. And then he'll be alone.
When he's poor and disgraced in both the eyes of others and himself in 2024, then I put it to at least 20%.
From a mental health perspective, and talking as someone with the same diagnosis as his, I would say that at the moment, based on what I saw, Kanye West is unlikely to take his own life. That is because the direction of his delusion is very much external. I see him as someone deeply paranoid, but his paranoia is seemingly directed at external causes, groups, people, entities, etc. So he would be way more likely to commit murder than to end himself.
I mean, delusions can lead to suicide, but it doesn't seem like that is the nature of his delusions. For example, he might kill himself if he believed that there was an actual demon inside his head that he must eliminate. But that's more akin to a schizophrenic halucination than a manic episode.
We are in for a very nasty recession. Unemployment well over 10%. House prices dropping. Bitcoin worthless. Financial institutions in peril. In the USA, it will be particularly nasty, as the Republicans will control the house and they will see no upside to spending money to counteract the massive unemployment.
Recession called by NBER (80%)
Unemployment over 10% (50%)
USA GDP -10% yoy (20%)
Edit. I also predicted a recession in 2023 last year.
Fixed, thanks.
Horserace politics
Biden doesn’t run. He did better than anyone expected in the midterms but he himself is not that popular and he is way too old. He’ll go out being considered an incredibly effective president who got more done legislatively than Obama despite having smaller majorities. And also, surprisingly, being the most progressive president we’ve had so far in the 21st century. Although it might take a few years for people to catch onto that.
Of the people vying for the party nomination, my bet would be on Governor Whitmer consolidating establishment support. Kamala is equally if not more unpopular than Biden and she ran the worst campaign during the democratic primaries in 2020, no one not even Kamala could seriously believe she’d win if she ran.
If Bernie runs (which would be cool but Christ he’s getting old) there’s a pretty good chance he wins outright (third times the charm!). He would desperately need to get staff that aren’t incompetent extremely online twitter people, which is what doomed him last time. I don’t think he will run though, I think he’ll serve as a kingmaker for progressives though.
Movies
Movie theaters are back. Thanks to more than a few movies coming out we easily match or even surpass the numbers we were hitting in 2019 in terms of box office.
The only movies to make a billion dollars will be Indiana Jones and The Little Mermaid. Indiana Jones is the highest grossing movie of 2023. Little Mermaid will serve as a big goodbye for the Disney live-action remakes as it’s the last major animated movie getting the treatment, at least out of the ones with nostalgia that carried Lion King to over a billion dollars.
Marvel movies continue their downward trend. Guardians 3 is the highest grossing film from them, but “only” makes 800 million.
DC movies make an okay amount of money. Aquaman underperforms compared to the first one. The Flash is their highest grossing movie around 600 million, mostly due to Michael Keaton returning as Batman. Ezra Miller is nowhere to be found during the press release.
Super Mario Bros becomes the highest grossing animated film of the year making about 900 million.
Dune Part 2 easily outgrosses Hunger Games (they release the same month).
Oppenheimer outgrosses Barbie (they release the same day)
Colin Farrell becomes an Oscar winner.
The Holdovers wins People’s Choice at TIFF
It's just barely not new years, and I did want to put out predictions. Honestly it's pretty hard to come up with things to predict.
Economics
Politics
World Events
Sports
Video Games
I disagree, I don’t think Biden will run. I know we said this before but really, he’s too old. It’s even possible he doesn’t run because of a health issue…
I wouldn’t put it at 100% but I would say “Biden won’t run” at 60%.
I would also like to think Warren will run but.. I don’t believe she will, she hasn’t made any moves towards this. She also said she wouldn’t run again (but people say things…).
If she did run I think she could win.
Out of scope for 2023 predictions, but the democrats are going to be extremely gun shy about running a woman who is a policy wonk with name recognition vs a conservative ball of rage. Put me down as if Biden has a pulse, they're going to run him.
There's not a great successor currently. Harris was the hope but ultimately she is more unpopular than Biden without the legacy and it seems unlikely she'd carry the demographics that Biden had to win over.
For Warren, she'd really need to expand her coalition. In the last primary she was simultaneously unpopular with the working class bloc of the Democratic party, while ALSO being unpopular with centrist and long-standing members of the Democratic party, leaving her with just the extremely narrow margin of college educated non-centrists.
Warren didn’t do herself any favors during her 2020 run among progressives. Without that support it’s hard to see her winning if she ran again.