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Notes -
Scott Alexander needed years to realize that yes, Biden is on his path to dementia. Maybe it is just that now more bettors have finally realized what is going on.
With the public information we had strong priors that Biden shows signs of likely dementia and if true, it will be progressing. Recently we saw how much it had progressed. Now we can estimate how much worse Biden will be in 1 month, 2 months, 4 months etc. with quite narrow confidence intervals.
As Anatoly Karlin says – it is all programmed. Previously people just refused to believe these bad news.
Similarly it was with effectiveness of masks in preventing covid. I didn't see any prediction markets but many people wanted to believe them to be effective despite all the evidence. When it was all reviewed and Cochrane review was published many still refused to believe that the evidence for any benefit is non-existent. Politicians are especially resistant to negative scientific findings but eventually they will be forced to accept reality in one way or another.
I’m not convinced that there’s “nothing going on”. The democrats are leaking bits of information about Biden’s mental state, and none of it has been reassuring. And I think that by itself is telling. If they thought he still had a chance, they would not be leaking what they are because there’s no way to back off from “he’s only good between 10 and 4.” Or that he’s not always with it at important meetings like G7. If they weren’t pushing for a change, it doesn’t make sense to leak that your president has dementia this bad.
I think this is what prediction markets are picking up on. If this is what’s being made public, then I don’t think they can actually continue with Biden. Kamala seems a reasonable choice, as she can step in as President and save the day.
The issue with Biden's dementia was revealed by Biden himself 4 years ago. In one response to Trump he revealed that he knows the details of the test used to assess dementia. Apparently he had been evaluated by doctors already then. We just have never been told the results and how they have changed with time.
Leaking this information would reduce uncertainty but essentially it would be the same that we can infer from videos but more precise.
I'd imagine anybody at that level of politics at his age would be subject to a lot of medical screening.
Not that Biden doesn't clearly show signs of pre-dementia, but I'd be surprised if Trump etc hadn't also been screened at some point.
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