Epistemic institutions, empowering exceptional people
To scale up forecasting efforts, we will need a large body of excellent forecasters to recruit from. Forecasting is a skill that improves over time, and it takes time to build a track record to distinguish excellent forecasters from the rest—particularly on long-term questions. Additionally, forecasting builds generally useful research and rationality skills, and supports model-building and detailed understanding of question topics. Therefore, getting students to forecast high-impact questions might be particularly useful for both students own development and the development of the forecasting community.
While existing forecasting platforms allow students to participate, the prestige and compensation offered by success is limited, especially outside of the narrow forecasting community.
We would be excited to fund highly prestigious forecasting tournaments for students, similar to the Maths Olympiad and IGEM in that it would aim to attract top talent, while being focussed on highly impactful questions. A second option is working with universities to give course credit for participation and success in the tournaments. In either case—excellent student forecasters would be rewarded by a prestigious marker on their CV, and fast-tracked application to superforecasting organisations.
Prestigious forecasting tournaments for students
Epistemic institutions, empowering exceptional people
To scale up forecasting efforts, we will need a large body of excellent forecasters to recruit from. Forecasting is a skill that improves over time, and it takes time to build a track record to distinguish excellent forecasters from the rest—particularly on long-term questions. Additionally, forecasting builds generally useful research and rationality skills, and supports model-building and detailed understanding of question topics. Therefore, getting students to forecast high-impact questions might be particularly useful for both students own development and the development of the forecasting community.
While existing forecasting platforms allow students to participate, the prestige and compensation offered by success is limited, especially outside of the narrow forecasting community.
We would be excited to fund highly prestigious forecasting tournaments for students, similar to the Maths Olympiad and IGEM in that it would aim to attract top talent, while being focussed on highly impactful questions. A second option is working with universities to give course credit for participation and success in the tournaments. In either case—excellent student forecasters would be rewarded by a prestigious marker on their CV, and fast-tracked application to superforecasting organisations.