This market resolves as "Yes" if, from now to December 31, 2030, scientists will manage to successfully revive an extinct species, leading to the birth or creation of at least one living specimen.
The species must have been declared extinct prior to this revival.
The newly born animal has to stay alive for at least one month.
Success must be documented and validated through peer-reviewed scientific research, official statements from credible scientific institutions, or announcements in major scientific journals or media outlets.
Update 2025-04-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Clarifications:
Scientists may modify existing animal embryos, changing their genetic code to that of an extinct species to achieve revival.
The modified animal must stay alive for at least one month.
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@NathanpmYoung if mods want to intervene. Feel free. I'm glad to let them unresolve and take care of this market in the future. As far as I'm concerned I clarified the resolution criteria in the comments long ago and the events matched what we agreed. Good luck at defining better resolution criteria.
@SimoneRomeo Your resolution criteria isn't great though.
Scientists may modify existing animal embryos, changing their genetic code to that of an extinct species to achieve revival.
I interpret this to mean modify the genetic code to exactly match the extinct species.
Are you claiming you intended to say: "modify >0 genes to more closely resemble the extinct species".
@NathanpmYoung imo traders should price in chance of misresolution into a market, unless it's a deliberately fraudulent resolution.
I think theres a lot of markets that are essentially "will I think x has occurred by xyz date" and that's okay.
@ElliotDavies you can argue against resolution criteria before markets resolve not after. There was only one person who had concerned, we discussed and clarified. See the discussions below. I agree that the resolution criteria are not excellent but resolving differently than I did would be unfair for all those that bet based on the available information.if mods want to take over I'm fine. I don't have any incentives to keep arguing about this.
@SimoneRomeo actually I encourage @mods to take over. I think I did my best to give an impartial resolution. If you figure out it's not the best do take over.
@NathanpmYoung to clarify, I thought it seemed misresolved at first, looking only at the title and description. However, the market creator issued a market clarification in the comments 3 months ago, that you can see here:
https://manifold.markets/SimoneRomeo/will-scientists-successfully-revive-21d82e758494#pizva1n60a
I think this case is analogous: we have a modern wolf with direwolf-like traits. As the market creator stated that that's sufficient for a YES resolution, the market resolving to YES seems correct to me. I stand by the fact that I don't think by the most common understanding of "extinct" and "species", scientists successfully revived an extinct species, but as interpretations can reasonably vary in this case (imo), clarifications in the comments affect the resolution (and take priority over the market title), and so I think YES is correct as per that market clarification.
In other words, if the resolution criteria in the description 100% totally contradicted the market clarification, mods would plausibly take over resolution and/or resolve N/A, but if the description and the market clarification don't contradict each other according to some plausible reading of both, the market clarification is binding for the resolution.
Mods would therefore not intervene, since the market creator @SimoneRomeo judges the market to resolve YES and the clarified resolution criteria seem to have been met.
if mods want to intervene. Feel free. I'm glad to let them unresolve and take care of this market in the future.
A market creator is free to transfer market resolution responsibilities to the mods, and let them resolve as they find most appropriate (we could proceed with a mod vote) but I'm not sure this wording is asking for that directly enough, it's more like giving us the option to, and we would likely defer to the current resolution (but other mods can jump in if they want to intervene / if they disagree with this comment).
(EDIT: Wrote this reply before seeing the previous market creator comment asking mods explicitly to take over. the previous paragraph is out of date)
@SimoneRomeo FWIW The problem here was the difference between what you wrote in the comments and what you wrote in the description.
The commentor you discussed with this at the time pointed this out: "I think I caused some confusion." but presumably you didn't go back to update the resolution criteria
@ElliotDavies Yeah I think precedent is that this is resolved correctly but I agree it's unsatisfying.
@SimoneRomeo no offence meant. I know how resolving markets is. I am not seeking to imply you didn't do your best.
@Bayesian i would +1 to bayesian—to me this is a fairly straightforward case where resolution is within the creator's purview (whether or not you like the definition they chose)
I am going to argue that no reasonable definition of speciation has been met here.
A common milestone in defining speciation is when the emerging species can no longer reproduce with others to produce viable, fertile offspring.
I'd be willing to make bets that this is not currently the case, and therefore they cannot be considered an extinct species.
Scientists may modify existing animal embryos, changing their genetic code to that of an extinct species to achieve revival.
The modified animal must stay alive for at least one month.
I'd argue that a good faith interpretation of this resolution criteria is not editing a handful of genes.
@DanielBets i mean, there are videos of the baby wolves:
If there's disagreement that it doesn't count as an extinct species in the future, you can post the links in this thread and I'll evaluate whether I need to change the resolution.
@SimoneRomeo you can read the comments on many of the different Reddit threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jtsdk5/dire_wolf_brought_back_after_being_extinct_for/
What they did is alter 20 genes to make a wolf LOOK like a direwolf. It does not actually have a full direwolf genome.
It doesn't seem like that should count as reviving an extinct species.
I agree that doesn't seem like it should count. i was initially hyped and this is pretty cool but seems largely cosmetic (haven't looked into details though) (EDIT: see following comments, I hadn't read the clarifications made in the comments of the market)
@DanielBets I won't take reddit as reputable source. A scientific publication would be ideal, but if at least a major news outlet argues there's no de-extinct species, I'll reconsider the resolution
@Bayesian why do you think this? I think it's definitely possible that there's some sort of fraud, but the species Aenocyon dirus just happens to be quite close to modern wolves, genetically. What the company did isn't scientifically that challenging, tbh.
@bens I am very uninformed on the field, i heard a lot of ppl were dismissive of it so took that seriously and it seemed compelling that a few genetic changes wouldn't represent anywhere near the difference in genome between the species. but if a few genetic changes do represent most of the diff between the species then my intuition would say that should be what determines whether it counts as a de-extinction
@Bayesian ya I'm actually reading more and now I'm skeptical for other reasons: mostly that I don't think it's trivial to validate whether the changes that Colossal made were enough to make the animal be able to breed with Dire Wolves, but also that it appears they mostly made cosmetic changes to the genome and not ones that were, say, most consistent with the traits that differentiated Dire Wolves and Gray Wolves, etc
@DanielBets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dire_wolf
Talk page on Wikipedia about this has some interesting arguments.
@bens I think it's plausible that modern wolves could successfully breed with dire wolves. That criteria might not be very helpful
@SimoneRomeo Definitely agree Reddit isn't a reliable source. The article just read a bit too much like a press release to me so I'm looking forward to reading third party coverage.
Here's arstechnica with a bit more skepticism that this isn't closer to a "GMO-ed" gray-wolf: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/de-extinction-company-announces-that-the-dire-wolf-is-back/
@DanielBets thanks, based on this article I'd still resolve as YES as it's included in the criteria that we agreed a few months ago