One theory is that EA places unusual weight on issues in the long-term future, compared to existing actors (companies, governments) who are more focused on eg quarterly profits or election cycles. If you care more about the future, you should be differentially excited about techniques to see what the future will hold.
(A less-flattering theory is that forecasting just seems like a cool mechanism, and people who like EA also like cool mechanisms.)
I have not read much of Tetlock’s research, so I could be mistaken, but isn’t the evidence for Tetlock-style forecasting only for (at best) short-medium term forecasts? Over this timescale, I would’ve expected forecasting to be very useful for non-EA actors, so the central puzzle remains. Indeed, if there is not evidence for long-term forecasting, then wouldn’t one expect non-EA actors (who place less importance on the long-term) to be at least as likely as EAsuse this style of forecasting?
Of course, it would be hard to gather evidence for forecasting working well over longer (say, 10+ year) forecasts, so perhaps I’m expecting too much evidence. But it’s not clear to me that we should have strong theoretical reasons to think that this style of forecasting would work particularly well, given how “cloud-like” predicting events over long time horizons is and how with further extrapolation there might be more room for bias.
One theory is that EA places unusual weight on issues in the long-term future, compared to existing actors (companies, governments) who are more focused on eg quarterly profits or election cycles. If you care more about the future, you should be differentially excited about techniques to see what the future will hold.
(A less-flattering theory is that forecasting just seems like a cool mechanism, and people who like EA also like cool mechanisms.)
I have not read much of Tetlock’s research, so I could be mistaken, but isn’t the evidence for Tetlock-style forecasting only for (at best) short-medium term forecasts? Over this timescale, I would’ve expected forecasting to be very useful for non-EA actors, so the central puzzle remains. Indeed, if there is not evidence for long-term forecasting, then wouldn’t one expect non-EA actors (who place less importance on the long-term) to be at least as likely as EAs use this style of forecasting?
Of course, it would be hard to gather evidence for forecasting working well over longer (say, 10+ year) forecasts, so perhaps I’m expecting too much evidence. But it’s not clear to me that we should have strong theoretical reasons to think that this style of forecasting would work particularly well, given how “cloud-like” predicting events over long time horizons is and how with further extrapolation there might be more room for bias.