I’m confused about why you think forecasting orgs should be trying to acquire commercial clients.[1] How do you see this as being on the necessary path for forecasting initiatives to reduce x-risk, contribute to positive trajectory change, etc.? Perhaps you could elaborate on what you mean by “real-world impact”?
The main exception that comes to mind, for me, is AI labs. But I don’t think you’re talking about AI labs in particular as the commercial clients forecasting orgs should be aiming for?
What better test of the claim “we are producing useful/actionable information about the future, and/or developing workable processes for others to do the same” do we have than some of the thousands of organisations whose survival depends on this kind of information being willing to pay for it?
IMO if a forecasting org does manage to make money selling predictions to companies, that’s a good positive update, but if they fail, that’s only a weak negative update—my prior is that the vast majority of companies don’t care about getting good predictions even if those predictions would be valuable. (Execs might be exposed as making bad predictions; good predictions should increase the stock price, but individual execs only capture a small % of the upside to the stock price vs. 100% of the downside of looking stupid.)
I think if you extend this belief outwards it starts to look unwieldy and “proves too much”. Even if you think that executives don’t care about having access to good predictions the way that business owners do, then why not ask why business owners aren’t paying?
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.
I’m confused about why you think forecasting orgs should be trying to acquire commercial clients.[1] How do you see this as being on the necessary path for forecasting initiatives to reduce x-risk, contribute to positive trajectory change, etc.? Perhaps you could elaborate on what you mean by “real-world impact”?
COI note: I work for Metaculus.
The main exception that comes to mind, for me, is AI labs. But I don’t think you’re talking about AI labs in particular as the commercial clients forecasting orgs should be aiming for?
What better test of the claim “we are producing useful/actionable information about the future, and/or developing workable processes for others to do the same” do we have than some of the thousands of organisations whose survival depends on this kind of information being willing to pay for it?
IMO if a forecasting org does manage to make money selling predictions to companies, that’s a good positive update, but if they fail, that’s only a weak negative update—my prior is that the vast majority of companies don’t care about getting good predictions even if those predictions would be valuable. (Execs might be exposed as making bad predictions; good predictions should increase the stock price, but individual execs only capture a small % of the upside to the stock price vs. 100% of the downside of looking stupid.)
I think if you extend this belief outwards it starts to look unwieldy and “proves too much”. Even if you think that executives don’t care about having access to good predictions the way that business owners do, then why not ask why business owners aren’t paying?
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.