Hey, thanks for sharing these other options. I agree that one of these choices makes more sense than forecasting in many cases, and likely (90%) the majority. But I still think forecasting is a solid contender and plausibly (25%) the best in the plurality of cases. Some reasons:
Which activity is best likely depends a lot on which is easiest to actually start doing, because I think the primary barrier to doing most of these usefully is “just” actually getting started and completing something. Forecasting may (40%)[1] be the most fun and least intimidating of these for many (33%+) prospective researchers because of the framing of competing on a leaderboard and the intrigue of trying to predict the future.
I think the EA community has relatively good epistemics, but there is still room for improvement, and more researchers getting a forecasting background is one way to help with this (due to both epistemic training and identifying prospective researchers with good epistemics).
Depending on the question, forecasting can look a lot like a bite-sized chunk of research, so I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive with some of the activities you listed and especially similar to summarizations/collections: for example, Ryan summarized relevant parts of papers then formed some semblance of an inside view in his winning entry.
Also, I was speaking from personal experience here; e.g. Misha and I both have forecasted for a few years and enjoyed it while building skills and a track record, and are now doing ~generalist research or had the opportunity to and seriously considered it, respectively.
I think this will become especially true as the UX of forecasting platforms improves; let’s say 55% this is true in 3 years from now, as I expect the UX here to improve more than the “UX” of other options like summarizing papers.
Hey, thanks for sharing these other options. I agree that one of these choices makes more sense than forecasting in many cases, and likely (90%) the majority. But I still think forecasting is a solid contender and plausibly (25%) the best in the plurality of cases. Some reasons:
Which activity is best likely depends a lot on which is easiest to actually start doing, because I think the primary barrier to doing most of these usefully is “just” actually getting started and completing something. Forecasting may (40%)[1] be the most fun and least intimidating of these for many (33%+) prospective researchers because of the framing of competing on a leaderboard and the intrigue of trying to predict the future.
I think the EA community has relatively good epistemics, but there is still room for improvement, and more researchers getting a forecasting background is one way to help with this (due to both epistemic training and identifying prospective researchers with good epistemics).
Depending on the question, forecasting can look a lot like a bite-sized chunk of research, so I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive with some of the activities you listed and especially similar to summarizations/collections: for example, Ryan summarized relevant parts of papers then formed some semblance of an inside view in his winning entry.
Also, I was speaking from personal experience here; e.g. Misha and I both have forecasted for a few years and enjoyed it while building skills and a track record, and are now doing ~generalist research or had the opportunity to and seriously considered it, respectively.
I think this will become especially true as the UX of forecasting platforms improves; let’s say 55% this is true in 3 years from now, as I expect the UX here to improve more than the “UX” of other options like summarizing papers.