The more time I spend forecasting, the more I think it has lots of the features I was looking for in a good “Task Y”:
It’s fun and interesting.
It’s beneficial for the people doing it; it helps people be Less Wrong<sup>TM<\sup> and plausibly has nontrivial signalling value in EA-adjacent circles for those who are good at it.
While the impact probably isn’t huge, there’s a reasonable case that, especially from a long-term perspective, it’s not negligible, especially for something that can be done in your free time.
It’s something that bright students and/or other people without much disposable income can easily participate in, which sets it apart from Earning to Give.
I think that forecasting can act as really good intellectual training for people. It seems really difficult to BS, and there’s a big learning curve of different skills to get good at (can get into automation).
I’m not sure how well it will scale in terms of paid forecasters for direct value (agreeing with “the impact probably isn’t huge). I have a lot of uncertainty here though.
I think the best analogy is that to hedge funds and banks. I could see things going one of two ways; either it turns out what we really want is a small set of super intelligent people working in close coordination (like a high-salary fund) or that we need a whole lot of “pretty intelligent people” to do scaled labor (like a large bank or trading institution).
That said, if forecasting could help us determine what else would be useful to be doing, then we’re kind of set.
The more time I spend forecasting, the more I think it has lots of the features I was looking for in a good “Task Y”:
It’s fun and interesting.
It’s beneficial for the people doing it; it helps people be Less Wrong<sup>TM<\sup> and plausibly has nontrivial signalling value in EA-adjacent circles for those who are good at it.
While the impact probably isn’t huge, there’s a reasonable case that, especially from a long-term perspective, it’s not negligible, especially for something that can be done in your free time.
It’s something that bright students and/or other people without much disposable income can easily participate in, which sets it apart from Earning to Give.
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about this.
I think that forecasting can act as really good intellectual training for people. It seems really difficult to BS, and there’s a big learning curve of different skills to get good at (can get into automation).
I’m not sure how well it will scale in terms of paid forecasters for direct value (agreeing with “the impact probably isn’t huge). I have a lot of uncertainty here though.
I think the best analogy is that to hedge funds and banks. I could see things going one of two ways; either it turns out what we really want is a small set of super intelligent people working in close coordination (like a high-salary fund) or that we need a whole lot of “pretty intelligent people” to do scaled labor (like a large bank or trading institution).
That said, if forecasting could help us determine what else would be useful to be doing, then we’re kind of set.