Occupy Wall Street: Predictions, Speculations

It is possible that a more accurate version of the Gandhi quote would be:

"First they ignore you. If this succeeds, you are essentially forgotten by history. Then they laugh at you. If this succeeds, you are essentially forgotten by history. Then they fight you. If this succeeds, you are remembered by history as a villain. If this fails, you win." This of course is far too simple. Further, I don't know the original context of the Gandhi quote. As such, this is more a reaction to the sort of Whig history that the quote seems to generally be used to endorse.

I would agree with you that change is inevitable. However, I do not think it possible for us to know whether this movement will achieve its goals. (Perhaps some individuals on Lesswrong can. However, I am skeptical.) Second, if this current movement has goals, it is unknown whether achieving these goals would be classifiable as progress. However, it is also unknown whether this movement failing would be better than it succeeding.

I'm transitioning, possibly, from the laughing stage and am beginning to feel the tiniest bit excited that perhaps some actual change is in order.

The next question is "Will this change be for the better?" (And no LW isn't the place to discuss this as applied to OWS.) I'm always amazed at how many people will embrace "change" without asking this question.

On the one hand, I feel sufficiently skeptical about the probability of a 'revolution'.

Keep in mind that from an outside view most revolutions produce a worse government then the one they replace.

General worry about mindkilling makes me wonder how good a topic this for LW.

If one wants specific predictions, I will note that Prediction Book has two related wagers to OWS. See 1, 2. However, neither of these addresses issues like success of the movement (or what success would even be defined by). I'd certainly welcome in that context more specific predictions of the results.

On the other hand, given how fast the world has been changing (the internet, gloablization), maybe change is inevitable and this is the way it happens now.

This is a non sequitur. (And furthermore, it could be used to argue for almost anything.) The amount of change can increase while the proportion of attempted changes that succeed remains constant, and this is probably the case.

"The Gandhi quote" appears to be apocryphal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations .

With today's Internet, when someone says that famous person X said awesome thing Y, the first thing you should do is search for confirmation. It can keep you from being embarrassed.

I know this is a rationality site, not a current affairs site, but when something tweaks my interest I like to know what "Less Wrong" thinks...waiting for a spontaneous post could take forever and finding a 'rationality-spin' would be disingenuous so I'll just ask:

What is possible and what is likely?

What factors are important?

I will add any concrete and precise predictions anyone has to PredictionBook for those that don't have their own account. Just reply to this comment with a proposition.

Having said that, I downvoted because I don't like seeing these kinds of posts on Less Wrong (not that the subject isn't interesting). Mind-killing content like this tends to attract comments full of data-less speculative bullshit.

Prediction: New York will start to lose its importance as a financial center in favor of places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, and Shanghai.

Typo in the first line, should be spelled "Gandhi."

Regardless of whether you think Occupy Wall Street is "right," we should still be able to have a rational discussion about the outcomes, and there's one outcome in particular that's been worrying me.

The worst possible outcome, in my opinion, would be if Occupy Wall Street gains enough momentum to become a major political power in the U.S., but not enough to decisively win.

Regardless of what happens Occupy Wall Street will almost definitely polarize the left further from the center, as they have been recently.

If politics is a game of prisoner's dilema, then the Republicans through the Tea Party have been defecting for the past few years, with no sign of being willing to change to cooperate. Meanwhile, the Democrats have been repeatedly cooperating. If this were a normal prisoner's dilemma game, then the Democrats should switch to defecting as well.

But, in government there is a third term, ability to operate. Assuming there isn't a clear majority in all sections of government:

If both parties cooperate, operation is the highest. If one defects and one cooperates, it's lower, but still there. If both parties decide to defect, the government loses almost all effectiveness. And my fear is that Occupy Wall Street will lead to this outcome.

I see a little discussion on intrade but no actual markets up yet.

I would guess that most of the regulars here are sane enough to be able to discuss positive/negative aspects of OWS, but I personally don't want this to be a place where people can turn to estimate the worth of most political events. "Let's see what those smart people at LW think" seems like the wrong approach to me. Most phenomena like this already have lots of expert attention/modeling/research on it, and it would be better to study that.

To really understand the economics of the situation, I recommend a basic economics text, a money and banking text, Mueller's Public Choice text, Olson's Logic of Collective Action, a basic Law and Economics text, Bryan Caplan's book on voters, and a google scholar search for "corporation campaign finance," or "campaign finance election outcomes." Look for papers doing statistical analysis of effect sizes, ignore papers without actual numbers backing the claims. All combined this should get you 1) The size and scope of the problem OWS protestors are protesting, 2) How effective their proposed solutions would be, 3) Blind spots of the protestors/media, 4) What's unique and what isn't with regard to this recession, etc.

I'm sure a sociology expert would have some offerings on the likelihood of the protest to create lasting political change, the probability of violence or worse resulting from it, and so on. But I really recommend digging into Google Scholar and finding out for yourself.

What is possible and what is likely?

Many things related to the topics the protest began about/is now about are possible. Many are the sorts of things that people implicitly bet money on, by deciding how much money to give to each political candidate, deciding which stocks and markets to invest in, etc. Those are good hints for what is likely.

What factors are important?

Not the Wall Street Occupation Protest.