I’m in the process of writing up my thoughts on forecasting in general and particularly EA’s reverence for forecasting but I feel, similar to @Grayden that forecasting is a game that is nearly perfectly designed to distract EAs from useful things. It’s a combination of winning, being right when others are wrong and seemingly useful, all wrapped into a fun game.
I’d like to see tangible benefits to more broad funding of forecasting that seems to be done in t he millions and tens of millions of dollars.
I would also be the type of person you would think would be a greater fan of forecasting. I’m the number one forecaster on Manifold and I’ve made tens of thousands of dollars on Polymarket. But I think we should start to think of forecasting as more of a game that EAs like to play, something like Magic the Gathering that is fun and has some relations to useful things but isn’t really useful by itself.
Maybe Open Phil are doing this because they feel like they often attempt to get good forecasts about stuff they care about in the course of trying to make the best grants they can in other areas, and after they have done that enough times, it seemed sensible to just formally declare that forecasting is something they fund. The theory here isn’t “developing forecasting as an art is an EA cause because it will improve worldwide epistemics” or whatever, but rather “we, Open Phil, need good forecasts to get funding decisions about other stuff right”.
If they mostly care about AI timelines, subsidize some markets on it. Funding platforms and research doesn’t seem particularly useful here (as opposed to much more direct research).
At some point, I kinda just want to say “ok, where has the forecasting money gone?”, and it seems to have overwhelmingly gone to community forecasting sites like Manifold and Metaculus. I don’t see anything like “paying 3 teams of 3 forecasters to compete against each other on some AI timelines questions”
Just confirming that informing our own decisions was part of the motivation for past grants, and I expect it to play an important role for our forecasting grants in the future.
[The forecasting money] seems to have overwhelmingly gone to community forecasting sites like Manifold and Metaculus. I don’t see anything like “paying 3 teams of 3 forecasters to compete against each other on some AI timelines questions”.
That’s directionally true, but I think “overwhelmingly” isn’t right.
We did not fund Manifold.
One of our largest forecasting grants went to FRI, which is not a platform.
While it’s fair to say that Metaculus is mostly a platform, it also runs externally-funded tournaments, and has a pro forecaster service.
There were a few grants to more narrowly defined projects. Most of these are currently not assgined to forecasting as a cause area, but you can find them here (searching for “forecast” in our grants database), see especially those before August 2021. [Update: we have updated the labels, and these grants are now listed here ]. I expect that we’ll make more of these types of grants now that forecasting is a designated area with more capacity.
I’m in the process of writing up my thoughts on forecasting in general and particularly EA’s reverence for forecasting but I feel, similar to @Grayden that forecasting is a game that is nearly perfectly designed to distract EAs from useful things. It’s a combination of winning, being right when others are wrong and seemingly useful, all wrapped into a fun game.
I’d like to see tangible benefits to more broad funding of forecasting that seems to be done in t he millions and tens of millions of dollars.
I would also be the type of person you would think would be a greater fan of forecasting. I’m the number one forecaster on Manifold and I’ve made tens of thousands of dollars on Polymarket. But I think we should start to think of forecasting as more of a game that EAs like to play, something like Magic the Gathering that is fun and has some relations to useful things but isn’t really useful by itself.
Maybe Open Phil are doing this because they feel like they often attempt to get good forecasts about stuff they care about in the course of trying to make the best grants they can in other areas, and after they have done that enough times, it seemed sensible to just formally declare that forecasting is something they fund. The theory here isn’t “developing forecasting as an art is an EA cause because it will improve worldwide epistemics” or whatever, but rather “we, Open Phil, need good forecasts to get funding decisions about other stuff right”.
If they mostly care about AI timelines, subsidize some markets on it. Funding platforms and research doesn’t seem particularly useful here (as opposed to much more direct research).
Fair point.
At some point, I kinda just want to say “ok, where has the forecasting money gone?”, and it seems to have overwhelmingly gone to community forecasting sites like Manifold and Metaculus. I don’t see anything like “paying 3 teams of 3 forecasters to compete against each other on some AI timelines questions”
Just confirming that informing our own decisions was part of the motivation for past grants, and I expect it to play an important role for our forecasting grants in the future.
That’s directionally true, but I think “overwhelmingly” isn’t right.
We did not fund Manifold.
One of our largest forecasting grants went to FRI, which is not a platform.
While it’s fair to say that Metaculus is mostly a platform, it also runs externally-funded tournaments, and has a pro forecaster service.
There were a few grants to more narrowly defined projects.
Most of these are currently not assgined to forecasting as a cause area, but you can find themhere(searching for “forecast” in our grants database), see especially those before August 2021.[Update: we have updated the labels, and these grants are now listed here ].I expect that we’ll make more of these types of grants now that forecasting is a designated area with more capacity.