Well written and pragmatic, thanks. Although forecasting does sounds great, I have no idea how animal nonprofits (to take one example) could use it to make better work.
I think this is a clear sign the community hasn’t been able to communicate its use case well at all. This is one reason I often use “predictive reasoning” as a more general concept when talking to people, interestingly especially if they are already aware of forecasting (as they’ve been conditioned to think it means prediction markets, tournaments, and resolution criteria).
Take your example of animal welfare, I don’t know the exact use case best aligned to you, but fundamentally i’m confident 95%+ of the decisions an animal nonprofit will make are based on two predictions:
1) What will the world be like in the future (insert timeline)?
2) What interventions will most impact/change that future closer to what you’d like it to be?
Forecasting, or more specifically, the processes that underpins the science of forecasting, can be used to increase the accuracy and efficiency of those two predictions.
Once you do that, a better estimation of the future world + a better estimation of the efficacy of your actions, will occur.
For example, forecast on the potential viability of cultured meat could have several actionable implications.
.m It might be something worth directly funding, particularly if we think that certain types of investment will have a strong impact on it’s like it would be successful. It also might be something to start investing in planning for in legal messaging communications et cetera.
Also, if we anticipate a massive global shift towards culture meat and thus away from factory farming it makes lobbying for factory farming reforms and corporate welfare of pledges somewhat less valuable.
This is much of the theory of impact/theory of change behind The Unjournal’s cultured meat pivotal questions, project and our upcoming workshop. We are working in some belief elicitation and some forecasting elements. However, it’s not clear whether these are situations in which the broad Wisdom of the Crowd adds a lot of value or whether it’s dependent on small groups of experts.
Well written and pragmatic, thanks. Although forecasting does sounds great, I have no idea how animal nonprofits (to take one example) could use it to make better work.
I can actually think of one example in animal welfare: the EA Animal Welfare Fund forecasts grant outcomes.
Great, good to know !
I think this is a clear sign the community hasn’t been able to communicate its use case well at all. This is one reason I often use “predictive reasoning” as a more general concept when talking to people, interestingly especially if they are already aware of forecasting (as they’ve been conditioned to think it means prediction markets, tournaments, and resolution criteria).
Take your example of animal welfare, I don’t know the exact use case best aligned to you, but fundamentally i’m confident 95%+ of the decisions an animal nonprofit will make are based on two predictions:
1) What will the world be like in the future (insert timeline)?
2) What interventions will most impact/change that future closer to what you’d like it to be?
Forecasting, or more specifically, the processes that underpins the science of forecasting, can be used to increase the accuracy and efficiency of those two predictions.
Once you do that, a better estimation of the future world + a better estimation of the efficacy of your actions, will occur.
Yes, makes sense, shorter or longer AI timelines do change the game a lot, for instance.
For example, forecast on the potential viability of cultured meat could have several actionable implications.
.m It might be something worth directly funding, particularly if we think that certain types of investment will have a strong impact on it’s like it would be successful. It also might be something to start investing in planning for in legal messaging communications et cetera.
Also, if we anticipate a massive global shift towards culture meat and thus away from factory farming it makes lobbying for factory farming reforms and corporate welfare of pledges somewhat less valuable.
This is much of the theory of impact/theory of change behind The Unjournal’s cultured meat pivotal questions, project and our upcoming workshop. We are working in some belief elicitation and some forecasting elements. However, it’s not clear whether these are situations in which the broad Wisdom of the Crowd adds a lot of value or whether it’s dependent on small groups of experts.
Also see Support Metaculus’ First Animal-Focused Forecasting Tournament which is something we are trying to support and we try to make sure that each of the forecasting questions has actionable value of information.