Church President Probabilities: 10,000 Possibilities

Frequent commenter DaveW used the results of the Monte Carlo simulation from my last post on Church president probabilities to put together this fun follow-up post (and as an added bonus, he corrected an error in my post that came up from cutting off the simulation at 360 months).

I love numbers and spreadsheets and attempts to predict the future that rarely work out, so I’ve been a long time fan of Ziff’s work in projecting the future of the presidency of The Church. Longtime readers will be familiar with his Church President Probability posts going back to 2015. Ziff has done an admirable job of building a model and running 10,000 simulations to compile a view of things that are likely to occur with the presidency of the church. But I’ve always wondered, what about the improbable scenarios? What are the craziest outcomes in his 10,000 simulations that aren’t likely to happen, but still certainly could? Well, Ziff has been kind enough to let me look through his results, and now I guess he’s letting me share them here on ZD.

These uncommon outcomes come from Ziff’s work, so he deserves most of the credit here, but I did make one small improvement. His simulations only went 30 years into the future, which is generally pretty good for talking about the lifespans of senior citizens, but in some instances we needed a few more years to see how things would play out, so I extended his forecasts as much as an additional 20 years, so we can really see the outliers. One impact is that Ziff is slightly underestimating the odds that Kearon will become president some day (it’s more like 38%, not 34%), and the average time as president is a bit higher for the younger apostles (Kearon’s average should be more like 6 years, not 4).

Like all the super hero movies they seem to make now, these 10,000 simulations open us up to 10,000 possible universes. Almost anything can happen in the multiverse. So let’s explore some strange new worlds

World 2803: Some things can last forever?
The Q15 stay very healthy, and Andersen is surprisingly the next to go in 2027. Then Oaks goes in 2031 just before his 99th birthday, followed quickly by Uchtdorf that same year. In 2033 we lose Eyring (99), and Christofferson and Gong. Cook lasts until age 96 in 2037, and Holland until age 99 in 2039. And who is still in the biggest of the red chairs through all of this? Nelson, who makes it to his 120th birthday before finally turning the keys over to Bednar in September 2044. No one else reached 120 in any of the simulations. Eyring was the only one to crack 115, with 1 scenario where he made it to 118. The chart below shows the presidential succession through all the current Q15 for the simulation. (The x-axis shows the month and year.)

World 8197 and 9616: American church no more
These two are pretty similar. In 8197, Nelson serves another 12 months, followed by 16 months from Oaks before the reins are turned over to Uchtdorf who serves for a very healthy 13 years before turning it over to Kearon for 19 years. Uchtdorf makes it to 99, just barely outlives Bednar (by 2 months) and Andersen (by 3 months) while Stevenson, Renlund and Soares all die in their mid 70s to skip all the way down to Kearon. 9616 gives us another 24 months from Nelson before Uchtdorf takes over for 16 years, followed by 4 years of Soares in charge. In this simulation all 15 of the current apostles are gone after 22 years, so someone else will have to take over at that point. But either way, we’ll have decades without an American at the helm. There are 347 worlds where Uchtdorf, Soares and Kearon all occupy the top spot, though others also do in most of those and it is often 5 or 10 years before the foreigners take over the top spot. These were the two quickest scenarios to becoming a true international church.

World 7555: It just goes on and on my friends
46 months of Nelson. 19 months of Oaks. 3 months of Eyring. And then begins the reign of Bednar. For the next 405 months. That’s nearly 34 years as president of the church, beating Brigham’s record by more than 4 years. Nations rise and fall. Generations of parents in Utah County name their kids “Bednar” and still, he remains. Out of 10,000 cases, there were 32 where someone besides Nelson reaches 25 years (like he did in 2803). In World 3255 Holland serves over 26 years as president, living to be 110. Andersen hits 25 years twice, living to be 111 in both cases. Rasband and Stevenson pull it off once each, and Kearon does it twice. But in all those cases none of them pass 27 years. But Bednar does it 25 times.

World 4557: There’s always a chance
Some of the apostles don’t have a great shot at becoming president. Eyring and Cook have low odds because they are significantly older than some men ahead of them in the ranks. Gong and Kearon are relatively low because they are a long way down the seniority list. But in world 4557 they all get a turn (and no one else does). Even with Nelson surviving until 2032, Eyring still has a lengthy 15 year presidency, living to be 106 years old. And then things get really crazy when a 99 year-old Cook takes over and survives for over 7 years. A short 3.5 year term for Gong leaves 6 years for Kearon.

World 9990: Everyone gets a turn!
It feels a little weird doing all this writing about who does and doesn’t get to be president of the church (and all the death involved) but in this world, 13 of the 15 get to be president. Uchtdorf and Renlund are the only ones that miss out. Until Kearon at the end, no one even makes it past 4.5 years The people in charge of updating the primary song with all the presidents of the church just give up in 2041 when they are faced with rewriting the song for the 4th time in only 18 months.

World 9271: Who is next?!?
Oaks it the next president in 66.9% of our many-universes model. But Holland taking over next wouldn’t be too surprising, and it happens 24.9% of the time. Eyring as the next president isn’t very likely at 3.4%, and Uchtdorf as the next president only has a 2.8% chance. But this isn’t an exercise in what is likely. We want to know what is unlikely! Jumping straight to Bednar happens in 1.7% of the cases, and 19 of the 10,000 worlds get Cook as the next president. Christofferson and Andersen are the next up in 0.11% of the worlds each, but in world 9271, Nelson outlasts all of those fellows and hands things over directly to Rasband in 2036.

World 4123: Hope you like meeting new people
I’m not sure I want to live in world 4123. Something bad seems to be going on there. Renlund dies next month at age 71. And then in 2025 we lose Holland (84) in January, Eyring (91) in March, Oaks (92) in May and Nelson (101) in September. Uchtdorf is then president but only for 8 months before he too joins them in the big red chairs in the sky in 2026 at age 85. Cook (87) takes over for two and a half years, but then he and Bednar (76) both go in 2028. Anderson in 2029. Rasband is only 79 and Soares only 72 when they go in 2030, and just like that, only two years into the Christofferson era, just 6 years from now, 11 of the current 15 are gone. Even then, Christofferson dies in 2033 at 87, Stevenson in 2035 at 80, and Kearon in 2043 at 81. Only Gong makes it to the sorts of ages we’ve become accustomed to apostles reaching, finishing his 13 years as president in 2048 at the age of 94. New chart! This one shows how long each man survives.

World 5896: I’ll have what they’re having
Conversely, in world 5896, everyone lives happily ever after. Well, everyone but Uchtdorf. He only makes it 18 months and dies at 85. But everyone else must be taking their vitamins. Renlund is the only other of the 15 that doesn’t make it to 90, passing at 89. The current first presidency holds on for another 6 years when Nelson goes at age 105 and Oaks takes over for 7 years reaching 104 himself, before Henry “Energizer Bunny” Eyring takes the baton for 3 years reaching 106 years of age. By this point it’s 2040 and while Holland (94), Christofferson (92) and Cook (94) have moved on, everyone else is still with us. Gong is the only other one who reaches triple digits, but on average, this group of 15 lives to be 97.3 years old!

World 2061: At least we’ll have religious liberty
6 more months of Nelson gives way to 10 years from Oaks and then 31 years of Bednar. So many GC talks on religious liberty, not so many happy prog-mos.

World 8584: Will they run out of GC material?
It’s not the record setting run we had from 1995 to 2004, but in this world the current 15 stay together for another 88 months. It’s not Nelson that is the weakest link here, but Eyring who goes first in 2032. The average age of the apostles tops 85 at this point, well above the current record of 80.2.

There you have it. All the weirdest things I could find in our many worlds experiment. I’ve invested, let’s just say “several” hours into building my beloved spreadsheet to parse all this data and make these graphs, which means looking for more scenarios is, at this point, pretty simple. Are there any unlikely outcomes you’d like to see?