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Re:How The Economist’s presidential forecast works by refulgentis on Sunday June 16, 2024 @04:16PM (#40699768)
My priors would go the opposite way: a full-body checkup cannot clear out the plaque in my arteries, lower my blood pressure, strength my vascular walls, and there's no miracle drugs that definitively address those. I think of a checkup that says "good to go, won't die in the next year!" is more like an auto checkup, where we do diagnostics then can take definitive action, it's more a warning of what's to come.

That being said saying odds are one of them dies before the election is uncomfortably high doesn't compute, at all, ex. the best steelman I can come up with is its supposed to translate to "P(Trump dies | Biden Dies) >= 50%", which I very much doubt is true if you look at actuarial tables.

Re:How The Economist’s presidential forecast works by spywaregorilla on Sunday June 16, 2024 @04:20PM (#40699789)
Actuarial tables tell you basically nothing about a specific individual. For that you would want to look at some personal. Like, say, a full body checkup.
Re:How The Economist’s presidential forecast works by refulgentis on Sunday June 16, 2024 @06:44PM (#40700729)
Yeah thats a good point, I agree, a full body checkup tells us stuff about an individual, but it doesn't heal them (or at length: meaningfully rule out, or affect, odds of dying in the next year)
Re:How The Economist’s presidential forecast works by plonk on Sunday June 16, 2024 @04:25PM (#40699817)
Apparently [1], Biden at least has "controlled" cholesterol, a normal EKG, some asymptomatic and controlled fibrillation. The number of experts who consult the guy every year is actually impressive.

The usual 70-year-old is probably a risky bet, but surely 10 specialists plus a team of generalists would make a more predictive yearly checkup. I think he's going to lose through normal politics and not by way of a heart attack.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Health...