MW Story already said what I wanted to say in response to this, but it should be pretty obvious. If people think of something as more than just a cool parlor trick, but instead regard as useful and actionable, they should be willing to pay hand over fist for it at proper big boy consultancy rates. If they aren’t, that strongly suggests that they just don’t regard what you’re producing as useful.
And to be honest it often isn’t very useful. Tell someone “our forecasters think there’s a 26% chance Putin is out of power in 2 years” and the response will often be “so what?” That by itself doesn’t tell anything about what Putin leaving power might mean for Russia or Ukraine, which is almost certainly what we actually care about (or nuclear war risk, if we’re thinking X-risk). The same is true, to a degree, for all these forecasts about AI or pandemics or whatever: they often aren’t sharp enough and don’t cut to the meat of actual impacts in the real world.
But since you’re here, perhaps you can answer my question about your clients, or lack thereof? If I were funding Metaculus, I would definitely want it to be more than a cool science project.
MW Story already said what I wanted to say in response to this, but it should be pretty obvious. If people think of something as more than just a cool parlor trick, but instead regard as useful and actionable, they should be willing to pay hand over fist for it at proper big boy consultancy rates. If they aren’t, that strongly suggests that they just don’t regard what you’re producing as useful.
And to be honest it often isn’t very useful. Tell someone “our forecasters think there’s a 26% chance Putin is out of power in 2 years” and the response will often be “so what?” That by itself doesn’t tell anything about what Putin leaving power might mean for Russia or Ukraine, which is almost certainly what we actually care about (or nuclear war risk, if we’re thinking X-risk). The same is true, to a degree, for all these forecasts about AI or pandemics or whatever: they often aren’t sharp enough and don’t cut to the meat of actual impacts in the real world.
But since you’re here, perhaps you can answer my question about your clients, or lack thereof? If I were funding Metaculus, I would definitely want it to be more than a cool science project.