The ranges on these questions seem pretty wide. Do you have thoughts on that? For hard questions (e.g., about emerging technology several decades in the future, like these questions), do superforecasters/Samotsvety often have such a wide range?
To add to Eli’s comment, I think on such complex topics, it’s just common for even personal estimates to fluctuate quite a bit. For example, here is an excerpt from footnote 181 of Carlsmith report:
[...] And my central estimate varies between ~1-10% depending on my mood, what considerations are salient to me at the time, and so forth. This instability is yet another reason not to put too much weight on these numbers.
My impression is wide ranges are pretty common on questions as difficult/complex as these. I think large differences can often come from very-hard-to-resolve deep disagreements in intuitions, as we’ve seen with the MIRI conversations.
If the range was too small on this type of question I might be worried about herding/anchoring. In a few cases there are 1-2 outlier forecasts on each end and the rest are relatively close together.
This is great; thanks for sharing!
The ranges on these questions seem pretty wide. Do you have thoughts on that? For hard questions (e.g., about emerging technology several decades in the future, like these questions), do superforecasters/Samotsvety often have such a wide range?
To add to Eli’s comment, I think on such complex topics, it’s just common for even personal estimates to fluctuate quite a bit. For example, here is an excerpt from footnote 181 of Carlsmith report:
My impression is wide ranges are pretty common on questions as difficult/complex as these. I think large differences can often come from very-hard-to-resolve deep disagreements in intuitions, as we’ve seen with the MIRI conversations.
If the range was too small on this type of question I might be worried about herding/anchoring. In a few cases there are 1-2 outlier forecasts on each end and the rest are relatively close together.
It could be cool to see the individual forecasts presented in a histogram.