All of this looks fantastic and like it should have been implemented 10 years ago. This is not something to sleep on.
The only nitpick I have is with how object level vs social reality is described. Lots of people are nowhere near ready to make difficult calculations, e.g. the experience from the COVID reopening makes it hard to predict that pandemic lockdown in the next 5 years is 40% even if that is the correct number. There’s lots of situations where the division of labor is such that deferring to people at FHI etc. is the right place to start, since these predictions are really important and not about people giving their own two cents or beginning learning the ropes of forecasting, which is what happens all too often (of course, that shouldn’t get in the way of new information and models travelling upwards, or fun community building/talent development workshops where people try out forecasting to see if its a good fit for them).
Yeah, I disagree with this on my inside view—I think “come up with your own guess of how bad and how likely future pandemics could be, with the input of others’ arguments” is a really useful exercise, and seems more useful to me than having a good probability estimate of how likely it is. I know that a lot of people find the latter more helpful though, and I can see some plausible arguments for it, so all things considered, I still think there’s some merit to that.
All of this looks fantastic and like it should have been implemented 10 years ago. This is not something to sleep on.
The only nitpick I have is with how object level vs social reality is described. Lots of people are nowhere near ready to make difficult calculations, e.g. the experience from the COVID reopening makes it hard to predict that pandemic lockdown in the next 5 years is 40% even if that is the correct number. There’s lots of situations where the division of labor is such that deferring to people at FHI etc. is the right place to start, since these predictions are really important and not about people giving their own two cents or beginning learning the ropes of forecasting, which is what happens all too often (of course, that shouldn’t get in the way of new information and models travelling upwards, or fun community building/talent development workshops where people try out forecasting to see if its a good fit for them).
Yeah, I disagree with this on my inside view—I think “come up with your own guess of how bad and how likely future pandemics could be, with the input of others’ arguments” is a really useful exercise, and seems more useful to me than having a good probability estimate of how likely it is. I know that a lot of people find the latter more helpful though, and I can see some plausible arguments for it, so all things considered, I still think there’s some merit to that.