I’ve been considering the possibility of the occurrence of organized political violence in the wake of this year’s election. I have been noticing people questioning the legitimacy of the process by which the election will be conducted, with the implied inference that the outcome will be rigged, and therefore without legitimacy. It is also my understanding that there exist organized militias in the US, separate from the armed forces, which are trained to conduct warfare, ostensibly for defense reasons, which I have reason to believe have a nontrivial probability of attempting to take control in their local areas in the case of an election result that they find unfavourable.
3% seems too high for me, depending on definition. I’d put it at around 1% of significant violent outbreaks (1000+ deaths due to violence), and less than 0.2% (below which point my intuitions break down) of civil war (50k+ deaths). If you include chance of a coup (significant deviance from current civil procedures with very limited violence), it might hit 3%.
Metaculus is using a very weak definition—at least two of four listed agencies (Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), Reuters and EFE) describe the US as being in civil war. There are a lot of ways this can happen without truly widespread violence.
I think you’re misinformed about militias—there are clubs and underground organizations that call themselves that—they exist and they’re worrisome. But they’re not widespread nor organized, and ‘trained to conduct warfare’ is vastly overstating it. There IS some risk (IMO) in big urban police forces—they are organized and trained for control of important areas, and over the years have become too militarized. I think it’s most likely that they’re mostly well-enough integrated into their communities that they won’t go much further than they did in the protests this summer, but if the gloves really come off, that’ll be a key determinant.
I’ve been considering the possibility of the occurrence of organized political violence in the wake of this year’s election. I have been noticing people questioning the legitimacy of the process by which the election will be conducted, with the implied inference that the outcome will be rigged, and therefore without legitimacy. It is also my understanding that there exist organized militias in the US, separate from the armed forces, which are trained to conduct warfare, ostensibly for defense reasons, which I have reason to believe have a nontrivial probability of attempting to take control in their local areas in the case of an election result that they find unfavourable.
Metaculus currently gives 3% probability of a civil war occurring in the wake of this election. While there are many scenarios which would not lead to the description of civil war, this probability seems far too low to me.
3% seems too high for me, depending on definition. I’d put it at around 1% of significant violent outbreaks (1000+ deaths due to violence), and less than 0.2% (below which point my intuitions break down) of civil war (50k+ deaths). If you include chance of a coup (significant deviance from current civil procedures with very limited violence), it might hit 3%.
Metaculus is using a very weak definition—at least two of four listed agencies (Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), Reuters and EFE) describe the US as being in civil war. There are a lot of ways this can happen without truly widespread violence.
I think you’re misinformed about militias—there are clubs and underground organizations that call themselves that—they exist and they’re worrisome. But they’re not widespread nor organized, and ‘trained to conduct warfare’ is vastly overstating it. There IS some risk (IMO) in big urban police forces—they are organized and trained for control of important areas, and over the years have become too militarized. I think it’s most likely that they’re mostly well-enough integrated into their communities that they won’t go much further than they did in the protests this summer, but if the gloves really come off, that’ll be a key determinant.