This will be resolved based on my judgement of the vibes of top Rationalist voices in 4 years.
If through their Tweets and Substack posts, I get the sense that they are unhappy with Trump's reforms, and that what got done was extremely damaging, vastly outweighs any benefits, and was worse than what other post WWII presidents have done, then I will resolve YES. Otherwise, NO.
EDIT: This would be judged from 1960 with JFK (68 years before 2028).
Market will be resolved seriously, even though it is a parody of https://manifold.markets/JamesGrugett/will-prominent-rationalists-judge-t#63ou9fccnl4. I will try to be as fair and objective as possible. Furthermore, I will not bet here.
Update 2025-08-01 (PST): - Prominent rationalist voices considered:
Scott Alexander
Nick Bostrom
Alternatives if their opinions are not available (AI summary of creator comment)
1,000
3.00@MartinRandall Nah he just has to beat his first term. Dubya was atrocious but he didn't rend civil society or severely mismanage a pandemic. Dubya also did some good things like PEPFAR and anti-malaria programs (both of which are already dismantled under Trump). (This is only my personal opinion and doesn't have anything to do with the resolution of the question).
Even if you think Trump is uniquely terrible, to get last place he has to do worse than his first term, when he made multiple errors handling a pandemic, including disbanding the team responsible for preparing for pandemics.
@MartinRandall USAID, universal tariffs (and even he doesn't, waving a big stick at our allies), waving a big stick at our allies, mass deportation, and Schedule F are all worse if they go through from a purely consequential sense. If youre not a consequentialist, I would also argue that Trump 2025 is uniquely evil in a way Trump 2019 was not.
@JessicaEvans To expand on why Yudkowsky is not on this list, I fear he is the type of nutty person to make the kind of argument like (Trump destroyed the US) -> (The US was building AI) -> (Trump wasn't all that bad). And I want this to be a serious market.
@Balasar Im under the impression that not only have prominent rationalists significantly (if you trust what they say) accelerated AI development, but EY also predicted his team would build ASI c. 2010 (and presumably didnt maximally try to stop them)
@MingCat Let's go with Scott Alexander and Nick Bostrom. If their opinions are not available, happy to entertain alternatives.