Dire Wolves and Dire Finances

De-extinction skepticism and high volatility in global markets

A Dire Wolf by Any Other Name…

TIME Magazine is a local fan-favorite on Manifold, due to the number of creative markets you can make from the TIME Person of the Year, TIME Athlete of the Year, TIME cover art, the TIME 100, etc.

So when TIME released a cover story claiming the return of the extinct dire wolf, markets moved. Manifold users had for a while been speculating over the activities of Colossal Biosciences, a stealthy company that has raised billions in funding to de-extinct the mammoth, among other species. No one really knew that dire wolves were on their radar until the story dropped.

On the announcement of their results, markets on de-extinction soared up to near 100%, only to shortly fall back to Earth after people started to look more closely at the claims with a skeptical eye.

Scientists raised concerns that the “dire wolf” pups were simply gray wolves with a handful of gene edits (20) from DNA sourced from dire wolves. Others speculated that it was possible that the genetic modifications were in fact mostly inspired by what scientists imagined the dire wolves to look like, not even tethered directly in the dire wolf DNA samples that Colossal had!

I was initially nearly ready to resolve my own market YES after reading the TIME Magazine article and other early reporting. I had wrongly assumed that a dire wolf, which only went extinct in the early Holocene, was very similar to gray wolves, and that a handful of genetic modifications might produce something that could plausibly breed with dire wolves, were they existing today.

I was wrong. While there’s an open debate as to the divergence of dire wolves (Aenocyon dirus) from other canines, it appears most likely that they diverged well over a million years ago, placing them phylogenetically further from gray wolves than other canines like coyotes, dholes, and jackals. This Nature paper places the divergence at over 5 million years ago, making it seem all-but-impossible that the genetic modifications from the Colossal Biosciences team would yield a specimen closer to a dire wolf than to a gray wolf. Indeed, as many have pointed out, Colossal seemed more concerned with the visual appearance of the wolf, going so far as to ensure a white coat color despite no evidence that dire wolves would have had such a coloration.

There’s not really a good definition of what it would mean for a species to be “de-extincted,” as you can’t build a time machine to see whether the specimens you create today could have bred with extinct animals. If you could fully clone an animal from samples of its DNA, that would likely meet the bar, but that’s untenable for the vast majority of extinct species due to the impracticality of extracting an entire workable genome, as well as difficulties in gestating a specimen that doesn’t involve some attempt at hybridization with the species of the gestating mother.

Despite all this, the result is still impressive. Traders view it as a positive update that Colossal Biosciences is serious about their other ventures, such as de-extincting the woolly mammoth:

With modern genetic tools, the world of Jurassic Park doesn’t seem terribly far-fetched:

Dire Straits for the Global Economy

While biologists have been debating the provenance of extinct canines, economists have been having a busy week thinking about dead felines.

Manifold’s recession tracker is back up to nearly 60%, after dropping briefly during what some labeled a “dead cat bounce” for the markets on Wednesday.

Fairly concurrent with the latest economic turmoil has been a dramatic rise in the likelihood of large-scale protest marches, as negative sentiment has started to boil over:

The high degree of economic uncertainty appears to be connected to the high degree of uncertainty in U.S. policymaking around tariffs and other economic levers. A wide range of scenarios are on the table. Possibilities include the potentially norm-breaking removal of Fed Chair Jerome Powell (27%)…

…a specific carve-out for Apple from the tariffs on China (40%)…

…insider trading by US government officials around major announcements on the tariffs (72%)…

…and reductions on tariffs for individual countries due to the round-the-clock negotiations that the Trump administration is said to be engaging in.

All of this together has resulted in some chaotic days of trading on Wall Street, with circuit breakers nearly triggered on several occasions:

One scenario that seems unlikely is the optimistic thought experiment of hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, of US, Japan, and Europe banding together with a reduction in mutual tariffs, followed by a unified front against Chinese trade practices.

Dire Straits for the Tumbles Financial Complex

The internal mana economy of Manifold might be due for its own miniature financial crisis as well. One Manifold user has built a financial complex through offering large volumes of loans. While there have previously been some close calls for this financial empire (including a bailout), it seems that the system is coming to a head at the end of this month.

The Manifold user in question has been taking loans at 100% interest rates over a 2-month period while simultaneously staking out a large position at 3:1 odds in the Canadian election happening on April 28th:

Pierre Poilievre’s position has been rapidly declining in opinion polling, due partly to the Biden-esque candidate replacement by the Liberal party and partly due to Poilievre’s difficulties in escaping the shadow of an American president who is currently unpopular in Canada, to say the least.

Roundup

In other news, several new OpenAI releases seem imminent, and perhaps one of them will be able to pass a test involving colored stick figures and arrows. The FIDE Women’s chess championship is ongoing, and Nintendo is having second thoughts about the pricing of the new Switch.

Happy Forecasting!

-Above the Fold