Thanks for these thoughts! I agree with most of what you said. Some replies to specific points:
1b: The post I mentioned discusses this point. I think it’s plausible that that’s a factor, but even if it were a major one, it still doesn’t explain the lack of demand for forecasting consultancies, which could presumably do an even better job at forecasting questions which don’t require company-specific information.
2: This matches my intuitions as well. Though I think it doesn’t say much about whether forecasting is actually useful or not, as this could mean “EAs are more keen to pay the initial (large) fixed cost to learn how to use and integrate this tool”, or “EAs use this tool because they like it, even though it isn’t actually that helpful for decisionmaking”
3: I agree with your point if we’re talking about forecasting in general! I think that all of the actors I mention make extensive use of forecasting. However, in this question, I tried to restrict my attention to Tetlock-style judgmental forecasting, as I mentioned in the first paragraph (this was my bad, I should have been clearer when specifying the question). The fact that these agents do use various forms of forecasting makes the question more intriguing for me, given that judgmental forecasting is very general and seemingly really promising.
Re: 1b (or 1aii because of my love for indenting): That makes sense. I think I agree with you, and I’m generally unsure how much of a factor what I described even is.
Re 2: Yeah, this seems right. I do think some of the selection effects might mean that we should expect that forecasting is less promising than one might think given excitement about them in EA, though?
Re: 3: Thanks for clarifying! I was indeed not narrowing things down to Tetlock-style judgmental forecasting. I agree that it’s interesting that judgement-style forecasting doesn’t seem to get used as much even in fields that do use forecasting (although I don’t know what the most common approaches to forecasting in different fields actually are, so I don’t know how far off they are from Tetlock-style things).
Also, this is mostly an aside (it’s a return to the overall topic, rather than being specific to your reply), but have you seen this report/post?
Thanks for these thoughts! I agree with most of what you said. Some replies to specific points:
1b: The post I mentioned discusses this point. I think it’s plausible that that’s a factor, but even if it were a major one, it still doesn’t explain the lack of demand for forecasting consultancies, which could presumably do an even better job at forecasting questions which don’t require company-specific information.
2: This matches my intuitions as well. Though I think it doesn’t say much about whether forecasting is actually useful or not, as this could mean “EAs are more keen to pay the initial (large) fixed cost to learn how to use and integrate this tool”, or “EAs use this tool because they like it, even though it isn’t actually that helpful for decisionmaking”
3: I agree with your point if we’re talking about forecasting in general! I think that all of the actors I mention make extensive use of forecasting. However, in this question, I tried to restrict my attention to Tetlock-style judgmental forecasting, as I mentioned in the first paragraph (this was my bad, I should have been clearer when specifying the question). The fact that these agents do use various forms of forecasting makes the question more intriguing for me, given that judgmental forecasting is very general and seemingly really promising.
Re: 1b (or 1aii because of my love for indenting): That makes sense. I think I agree with you, and I’m generally unsure how much of a factor what I described even is.
Re 2: Yeah, this seems right. I do think some of the selection effects might mean that we should expect that forecasting is less promising than one might think given excitement about them in EA, though?
Re: 3: Thanks for clarifying! I was indeed not narrowing things down to Tetlock-style judgmental forecasting. I agree that it’s interesting that judgement-style forecasting doesn’t seem to get used as much even in fields that do use forecasting (although I don’t know what the most common approaches to forecasting in different fields actually are, so I don’t know how far off they are from Tetlock-style things).
Also, this is mostly an aside (it’s a return to the overall topic, rather than being specific to your reply), but have you seen this report/post?