Glad you brought up real money markets because the real choice here isn’t “5 unpaid superforecasters” vs “200 unpaid average forecasters” but “5 really good people who charge $200/h” vs “200 internet anons that’ll do it for peanuts”. Once you notice the difference in unit labor costs, the question becomes: for a fixed budget, what’s the optimal trade-off between crowd size and skill? I’m really uncertain about that myself and have never seen good data on it.
Glad you brought up real money markets because the real choice here isn’t “5 unpaid superforecasters” vs “200 unpaid average forecasters” but “5 really good people who charge $200/h” vs “200 internet anons that’ll do it for peanuts”. Once you notice the difference in unit labor costs, the question becomes: for a fixed budget, what’s the optimal trade-off between crowd size and skill? I’m really uncertain about that myself and have never seen good data on it.