Seconding Nuño’s assessment that this comment is awesome. While waiting for his response I’ll butt in with some quick off-the-cuff takes of my own.
On why no countries use prediction markets / forecasting to make crucial decisions:
My first reaction is “idk, but your comment already provides a really great breakdown of options that I would be excited to be turned into a top-level post.”
More work put into creating impactful questions, e.g. via identifying forecastable cruxes in key EA debates and integrating with ongoing EA-aligned research.
Better incentives for deep, collaborative predictions on these impactful questions.
The question you ask about “studying forecasting to benefit EA” vs. “prediction markets as an EA cause area” is also important. I’m inclined to favor interventions closer to “studying forecasting to benefit EA” at present (though I might frame it more as “improve EA’s wisdom/decision-making via various means including forecasting”, h/t QURI/Ozzie for influence here) because I feel we’re a relatively young and growing movement with a lot of resources (money + people) to use and not much clarity on how to do it best. Once we get better at this ourselves, e.g. forecasting platforms and prediction markets have clearly substantially improved important EA decisions, I’d feel it’s more time for “prediction markets/forecasting platforms improving non-EA’s decision-making” to be an EA cause area. I’m open to changing my mind on this e.g. if I see more evidence of forecasting having already improved important EA decisions. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ds2PCjKgztXtQrqAF/disentangling-improving-institutional-decision-making-2 and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YpaQcARgLHFNBgyGa/prioritization-research-for-advancing-wisdom-and are good pointers on this overall question as well.
Seconding Nuño’s assessment that this comment is awesome. While waiting for his response I’ll butt in with some quick off-the-cuff takes of my own.
On why no countries use prediction markets / forecasting to make crucial decisions:
My first reaction is “idk, but your comment already provides a really great breakdown of options that I would be excited to be turned into a top-level post.”
If I had to guess I think it’s some combination of universal human biases and fundamental issues with the value of prediction markets at present. On human biases, it seems like many people have a distaste for markets on important topics and quantified forecasting is an unnatural-feeling activity for many people to partake in. On fundamental issues, I’d refer to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dQhjwHA7LhfE8YpYF/prediction-markets-in-the-corporate-setting which you mentioned and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E4QnGsXLEEcNysADT/issues-with-futarchy for ideas.
On what things I’d like to see done overall, I’d point to the solution ideas and conclusion section of my post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/S2vfrZsFHn7Wy4ocm/bottlenecks-to-more-impactful-crowd-forecasting-2. In particular:
More work put into creating impactful questions, e.g. via identifying forecastable cruxes in key EA debates and integrating with ongoing EA-aligned research.
Better incentives for deep, collaborative predictions on these impactful questions.
The question you ask about “studying forecasting to benefit EA” vs. “prediction markets as an EA cause area” is also important. I’m inclined to favor interventions closer to “studying forecasting to benefit EA” at present (though I might frame it more as “improve EA’s wisdom/decision-making via various means including forecasting”, h/t QURI/Ozzie for influence here) because I feel we’re a relatively young and growing movement with a lot of resources (money + people) to use and not much clarity on how to do it best. Once we get better at this ourselves, e.g. forecasting platforms and prediction markets have clearly substantially improved important EA decisions, I’d feel it’s more time for “prediction markets/forecasting platforms improving non-EA’s decision-making” to be an EA cause area. I’m open to changing my mind on this e.g. if I see more evidence of forecasting having already improved important EA decisions. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ds2PCjKgztXtQrqAF/disentangling-improving-institutional-decision-making-2 and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YpaQcARgLHFNBgyGa/prioritization-research-for-advancing-wisdom-and are good pointers on this overall question as well.