Oxford Workshop on Longterm Forecasting happened, track record of science-fiction authors unearthed, forecasters surprised by ML models' math ability jump.
Do you agree with my view that there's a strange absence of predictions related to abortion in the post-Dobbs world, specifically in the on-the-ground consequentialist sense of predicting medium-term change in number of US abortions, birth rate, pill availability, and the like? Feels like we've had a lot of these for Covid and Ukraine, but the abortion-forecasting dialogue (to the extent it exists) is only about Supreme Court cases and legislation.
I'm interested in hearing if anyone has put together a bunch of these forecasts. In the meantime, I've launched a mini-contest to fill the gap: https://forms.gle/UEejKBaBvwJQxn5k7
I've wanted to put some up on Metaculus, though there are some challenges in what information to use to resolve these questions. I've also been on vacation the past week so I haven't followed through on it. I put my initial thoughts in this comment, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and I'd be happy to collaborate on making some Metaculus questions about it if you were interested: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/956/discussion-topic-what-are-some-suggestions-for-questions-to-launch/#comment-95844
Thanks for this. Your questions on Metaculus are quite interesting. In some sense your questions 2-4 are sticking closer to the "change in the law" category, where the props should be easier to resolve, while my questions are mostly "changes on the ground" like your question 1, which is much harder to resolve with clear data for the reasons you set out. I'll take a look at the other Metaculus discussions and see if anyone has come up with ways to measure consequences with some clarity.
I have yet to play around with creating markets on Metaculus or Manifold. Let me check them out. My historic reluctance to move my annual forecasting contests (which go back to 2016) onto a big platform has been (a) fear that the platform won't have all the functionality that I've rigged up in my Google Sheets, (b) concern that the platform might go away, and (c) as a "judge" of the more ambiguous propositions (like these abortion ones), not wanting to be held accountable by a large angry mob, in contrast with the smallish friendly mob that holds me accountable today.
Do you agree with my view that there's a strange absence of predictions related to abortion in the post-Dobbs world, specifically in the on-the-ground consequentialist sense of predicting medium-term change in number of US abortions, birth rate, pill availability, and the like? Feels like we've had a lot of these for Covid and Ukraine, but the abortion-forecasting dialogue (to the extent it exists) is only about Supreme Court cases and legislation.
I'm interested in hearing if anyone has put together a bunch of these forecasts. In the meantime, I've launched a mini-contest to fill the gap: https://forms.gle/UEejKBaBvwJQxn5k7
I've wanted to put some up on Metaculus, though there are some challenges in what information to use to resolve these questions. I've also been on vacation the past week so I haven't followed through on it. I put my initial thoughts in this comment, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and I'd be happy to collaborate on making some Metaculus questions about it if you were interested: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/956/discussion-topic-what-are-some-suggestions-for-questions-to-launch/#comment-95844
Thanks for this. Your questions on Metaculus are quite interesting. In some sense your questions 2-4 are sticking closer to the "change in the law" category, where the props should be easier to resolve, while my questions are mostly "changes on the ground" like your question 1, which is much harder to resolve with clear data for the reasons you set out. I'll take a look at the other Metaculus discussions and see if anyone has come up with ways to measure consequences with some clarity.
Kind of, there are some questions (https://metaforecast.org/?query=abortion), but not all that many. Metaculus has a bunch of questions on US Supreme Court decisions, though (https://metaforecast.org/?query=US+supreme+court).
What would you think about hosting your tournament on Manifold?
I have yet to play around with creating markets on Metaculus or Manifold. Let me check them out. My historic reluctance to move my annual forecasting contests (which go back to 2016) onto a big platform has been (a) fear that the platform won't have all the functionality that I've rigged up in my Google Sheets, (b) concern that the platform might go away, and (c) as a "judge" of the more ambiguous propositions (like these abortion ones), not wanting to be held accountable by a large angry mob, in contrast with the smallish friendly mob that holds me accountable today.
Yeah, your hesitations make sense. Curious to see what you end up doing once you check them out.
Here's the write-up of what I see in the first 25 contest entries. Happy to take any help in putting the same props up on Metaculus! https://braff.co/advice/f/post-roe-america-the-answers
Cheers, might mention in the next edition.