Thursday, October 13, 2016

Odds of Trump becoming President

Here are presidential election odds based on betting markets. Currently, Trump is at 17%. If there is a 10% chance of Trump will take what could have been a quickly-defused diplomatic incident and turn it into World War III, then we live in scary times.

Then again, a 2% of starting World War level catastrophe every four years, we'd probably get through about a century in a half without such an incident. Without getting into SlateStar level complications, which I admire, my guess is that might be pretty good by historic standards. Or am I still not quite appreciating the black swan problem sufficiently?

Back to political betting - since our overlords decided it was against out best interest to access such things, they have to be rerouted through another site located in the European Union. The same percentages are verified by other sites, so I trust them.