Nuno, great stuff as always! I hope you don't stop writing this newsletter. Your attack on Bertelsmann come in way over the top, though. Bertelsmann's origins are unsavory to be sure. But the group and foundation are respected big business in Germany now. Their thousands of workers hail from all nations; I personally know someone with Persian roots who works there, and they would think this attack is odd. Most of their foundation money now comes from the Arvato dividend, and the company radically reinvented itself. That's true even if you look at the company since the 90s bookclub sect times.
There are players in the forecasting & betting space whose crumminess and money laundry connections are much more worrisome than Bertelsmann. Especially in crypto forecasting.
The media they publish may be very low brow (e.g. Antena 3 in Spain or M6 in France) but there isn't significant Nazism left in there.
In the unfortunate event that you decide to stop writing the newsletter, you might be interested in an emotionally satisfying way of passing the torch. So you could consider creating a Manifold market about the identity of the person who, in your opinion, writes the best forecasting newsletter in 2023. Anyone writing a newsletter could add themselves as an option. Then, in a year's time, you would resolve in favor of whoever you think has most effectively filled the gap. (And in the fortunate event that you were to resume writing it, just resolve N/A, I suppose.)
Great post! I think you are definitely on to something with your questioning of what Infer has done with the $8mm grant. One thing they definitely aren't doing with the money is investing in writing good questions. For example, they only had three questions related to China's 20th Party Congress and they were the laziest questions possible, all three essentially the same since they ask about the future prospects of three individuals who all belong to the SAME FACTION. Another sketchy experience I have recently had with Infer was when they offered me $250/month bounties to start a team and recruit 10 forecasters to join it, but in order to get the monthly bounty all ten team members must make at least one forecast and if that minimum isn't met the team lead receives nothing. That means even if nine team members make 25 forecasts each generating a total of 225 unique forecasts, if the tenth team member fails to make a single forecast the team lead won't qualify for the bounty. So they would pay me for 10 forecasts, but not for 225? To me, that is exploitative. I would love to see how they report their spending because I would not be the least bit surprised if they report that they do pay the team leads even for months that they do not. It seems very clear that the grant they received was used to build products that are then reserved for their paying clients. It is very clear that basically none of that money has been invested in improving the public-facing forecasting tools or compensating the users of their platform. Infer has some 'splaining to do...
Great read, as always. I might add that my (lighthearted) annual forecasting contest just launched its 2023 edition tonight, and you are your readers are welcome to join. Link is below and it's free. (Feel free to delete this whole comment if there's some kind of rule or custom against self-linking.) https://braff.co/advice/f/announcing-the-2023-narcissist-forecasting-contest
Edit: Contrarian offers $500k bet should have linked to: <https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/1m-bet-rules>
Nice post! I appreciate all the research you put into combing through the developments of all the players.
Nuno, great stuff as always! I hope you don't stop writing this newsletter. Your attack on Bertelsmann come in way over the top, though. Bertelsmann's origins are unsavory to be sure. But the group and foundation are respected big business in Germany now. Their thousands of workers hail from all nations; I personally know someone with Persian roots who works there, and they would think this attack is odd. Most of their foundation money now comes from the Arvato dividend, and the company radically reinvented itself. That's true even if you look at the company since the 90s bookclub sect times.
There are players in the forecasting & betting space whose crumminess and money laundry connections are much more worrisome than Bertelsmann. Especially in crypto forecasting.
The media they publish may be very low brow (e.g. Antena 3 in Spain or M6 in France) but there isn't significant Nazism left in there.
In the unfortunate event that you decide to stop writing the newsletter, you might be interested in an emotionally satisfying way of passing the torch. So you could consider creating a Manifold market about the identity of the person who, in your opinion, writes the best forecasting newsletter in 2023. Anyone writing a newsletter could add themselves as an option. Then, in a year's time, you would resolve in favor of whoever you think has most effectively filled the gap. (And in the fortunate event that you were to resume writing it, just resolve N/A, I suppose.)
Great post! I think you are definitely on to something with your questioning of what Infer has done with the $8mm grant. One thing they definitely aren't doing with the money is investing in writing good questions. For example, they only had three questions related to China's 20th Party Congress and they were the laziest questions possible, all three essentially the same since they ask about the future prospects of three individuals who all belong to the SAME FACTION. Another sketchy experience I have recently had with Infer was when they offered me $250/month bounties to start a team and recruit 10 forecasters to join it, but in order to get the monthly bounty all ten team members must make at least one forecast and if that minimum isn't met the team lead receives nothing. That means even if nine team members make 25 forecasts each generating a total of 225 unique forecasts, if the tenth team member fails to make a single forecast the team lead won't qualify for the bounty. So they would pay me for 10 forecasts, but not for 225? To me, that is exploitative. I would love to see how they report their spending because I would not be the least bit surprised if they report that they do pay the team leads even for months that they do not. It seems very clear that the grant they received was used to build products that are then reserved for their paying clients. It is very clear that basically none of that money has been invested in improving the public-facing forecasting tools or compensating the users of their platform. Infer has some 'splaining to do...
Great read, as always. I might add that my (lighthearted) annual forecasting contest just launched its 2023 edition tonight, and you are your readers are welcome to join. Link is below and it's free. (Feel free to delete this whole comment if there's some kind of rule or custom against self-linking.) https://braff.co/advice/f/announcing-the-2023-narcissist-forecasting-contest