Prediction Tournament: Who will win the Cause Exploration Prize?

Manifold is hosting a prediction tournament over which four essay submissions in the Cause Exploration Prize will win.

The top 20 traders by profit get rewards proportional to their profits, out of a $1000 prize pool.

To make this we scraped ~~131~~ 151 submissions under the Cause Exploration Prizes tag.
Let me know if we missed any!

Why we’re doing this

We’d like to eventually build a page for people to invest in projects that produce public goods (as in a market for impact certificates). Betting on projects is not the same thing as investing in them, but they rhyme.

Consider this a low-stakes practice round for impact certificates—you’ll be able to practice forecasting impact, and Manifold will be able to figure out some technical, design, product, and ethical issues with forecasting impact before we build a product for people to invest in impact for real.

How to participate

Go to manifold.markets and sign up with you google account if you haven’t already
1. New users start with 1000 mana (play currency, equivalent to $10 USD)
Go to the CEP Tournament group and search for the market corresponding to a submission you want to bet in
1. You can only search the titles. If you want to, like, search for submissions in a cause area, it’s better to search on this forum than on Manifold.

Trading Tips

The prior any particular essay wins is ⁴⁄₁₅₁ or 2.6%

Don’t just consider whether you like or dislike a cause, but what other people will think Open Phil thinks will be a good cause. While being a “value bettor” is one way to profit, you can also profit by correctly anticipating market sentiment and selling your position when the market moves in a profitable direction.

It’s a bad idea to bet all your mana on one thing.

If you strongly believe in a project and want to bet a lot on it, you may want to leave a large limit order so you don’t bet the market past the probability you think it should be. Especially if the market is very new, small bets will move the probability a lot which will cut into your profits (this is called slippage).

If you’re very certain that a market is at the precisely right probability, consider adding limit orders both over and under the current probability.

These markets trade using mana, the same play currency that’s used in the rest of Manifold, which means that established users with existing success have an advantage, since the more you bet, the more profit (or loss) you make. However, you can buy more mana, and this is more cost effective for EAs than non-EAs because mana can only be cashed out as charity donations.