From late 2020 to last month, I worked at grassroots-level non-profits in operational roles. Over that time, I’ve seen surprisingly effective deployments of strategies that were counter-intuitive to my EA and rationalist sensibilities.I spent 6 months being the on-shift operations manager at one of the five largest food banks in Toronto (~50 staff/volunteers), and 2 years doing logistics work...
FPT, Vietnam’s largest IT service provider, and Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, announced the renewal of a three-year strategic partnership agreement. As part of this continued commitment, FPT and Mila will explore collaboration on research projects related to large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) while promoting Responsible AI, an approach to....
One topic that we at Metaculus have regarded to be of considerable importance (even before the current pandemic) is the topic of Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness. Over the past few years, we've ran a few related question series focused on the possibility of various types of pandemics, and, before the …. Categories:
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Join renowned astrophysicist and bestselling author Avi Loeb as he takes us on a mind-bending journey through the cosmos in this captivating episode. Discover the fascinating possibilities of advanced technology created by distant alien civilizations and its potential impact on our growth as a species.
This is partly based on my experiences working as a Program Officer leading Open Phil’s Longtermist EA Community Growth team, but it’s a hypothesis I have about how some longtermists could have more of an impact by their lights, not an official Open Phil position.Context: I originally wrote this in July 2022 as a memo for folks attending a retreat I was going to.
The high interest and proliferation of questions on the novel coronavirus calls for dedicated attention, which led to the formation of pandemic.metaculus.com. Managing it, though, is straining our very limited staff and community moderator team. Contingent on acquisition of funding (which we are working to secure), we're looking to ….
As you'll discover if you go to pandemic.metaculus.com, we've now set up a separate domain to host the proliferating set of COVID-19 questions, which will allow us to go to even finer-grained detail without completely taking over Metaculus.com, but also keeping the higher-attention questions on the latter. The …. Categories:
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Right now, a few official policies have been adopted and are listed in the FAQ. But there are a lot of situations that come up repeatedly that we should have an official rule for. For example: What happens when a resolution happens when a question is still open?. What …. . Categories:
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Continuous predictions are much more powerful and much more nuanced than binary predictions. Rather than specifying whether or not something does happen, you can specify how much of something happens, or when it happens, if it happens at all. The simple controls available thus far have allowed predictors to specify …. Categories:
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In case you have missed it in the news item or newsletter, Metaculus is currently looking to augment the very time-constrained Max with a full-stack developer. This person will be quite crucial in bringing to life the many, many great features currently sitting in the queue. This post is both …. Categories:
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It's pretty clear that the single-gaussian(ish) function is insufficient to cover the breadth of different distributions people would like to enter in numerical predictions. It is, however, quite nontrivial to work out exactly what there should be. A current proposal on the table is that as a "power" (i.e. that …. Categories:
Metaculus Itself
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Earlier today, I was making a prediction on question whose median prediction seemed way too high. Because I want those informed by these predictions to have accurate beliefs, for a brief moment, I felt inclined to predict way below the median prediction (and even below my true belief) in order …. Categories:
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We've just rolled out a set of improvements to numerical questions, including: Slightly different slider and percentile behavior (moving the side sliders no longer moves the center one.). . Vertical rather than horizontal listing of percentile values for open questions.
. The curve is now a logistic distribution rather than a gaussian. …. Categories:
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On 31st May, Martin Rees spoke to CBC Radio about his recent book 'If Science is to Save Us' and how science needs to become part of our common culture. Listen and read the full article.
New features and other updates are now starting to appear on Metaculus. Below is a list, which we'll continue to update as updates appear. Please use this thread to comment on these new features, note bugs, etc. Enjoy!. Update 2020-11-05. (Actually this went live a few days ago but just …. Categories:
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The post Information security in high-impact areas appeared first on 80,000 Hours.
This is a place to ask questions about Metaculus itself.
Are you new to forecasting and confused by scoring? Do you have a burning question you never knew where to ask? Do you want to know how to win tournaments? Do you have a technical question about conditional probabilities? Are …. Categories:
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What sorts of possibilities lie at the intersection of forecasting and blockchain technologies? To explore this question, we’ve developed an application with support from the Tezos Foundation that cryptographically records Metaculus community forecasts, enabling their public verification for posterity. This adds an additional layer of security and prevents bad actors ….
Metaculus is working together with a team of researchers who are studying the psychological basis of forecasting abilities. We're
working together to organise a forecasting experiment, which will likely involve running a contest on a dozen binary questions on Metaculus. But which questions should we include?. We want to ensure …. Categories:
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As a fun exercise and an ingredient to a slide I'd like to make (illustrating the danger of cherry-picking successful predictions), I'd love to hear from people what their very best prediction was.
No need for humility: it doesn't matter if this was skill of just plain luck — all …. Categories:
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On 25th May, Geoffrey Hinton held a public lecture "Two Paths to Intelligence".
Blurb. Digital computers were designed to allow a person to tell them exactly what to do. They require high energy and precise fabrication, but they allow exactly the same computation to be run on physically different pieces of hardware.
Previously, a 50% point bonus was awarded for a forecaster’s final prediction on a question. This final prediction bonus was meant to incentivize forecasts on questions near closing, and it only applied when the question closed before it resolved. (As opposed to resolving early, before the question had the …. Categories:
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NewsMatch makes it easy to find relevant context for questions — so when the story changes, so can your forecast. It uses a semantic similarity model to match Metaculus questions to news stories from across the globe, presenting you with a list of articles most likely to be relevant. . We …. Categories:
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Now you can make conditional forecasts on continuous questions: Explore a wider range of rich relationships between the events you care about.
What is the relationship between whether. SpaceX's Starship reaches orbit this year. and a numerical or date outcome such as. When will humans reach Mars?. Conditional continuous questions …. Categories:
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Community Update. With new global notifications, learn when the Community Prediction updates by at least 10% for any question you’ve forecast—and all with a single click. Now it’s easier to track fast-moving stories, stay current with the latest evidence and arguments, and keep your own predictions fresh sitewide. . Unlike custom …. Categories:
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Both for each user and for the system as a whole, Metaculus provides a track record page with lots of fun data. But there are a number of potential improvements and it has not been upgraded in a while. What should be added or changed? Here are a few potential …. Categories:
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Creating Clarity. Curious to learn the likelihood of an event given the outcome of another? Now you can create conditional pairs of binary questions and invite forecasters to share their predictions to clarify the relationships between events.
Not yet familiar with conditional pairs? Scroll down to 'Introducing Conditional Pairs' or …. Categories:
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Maybe you’re updating your forecast. Or maybe you’re the foremost expert in this topic and you’ve got your prediction all queued up. Or maybe you’ve got a burning passion to predict and can’t be bothered with pedestrian concerns like scrolling farther down the page. Whichever scenario applies, our new question …. Categories:
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The Metaculus community's feedback is incredibly important to us, and we'd greatly appreciate your response to our forecaster survey. Let us know what you like and what we can improve on, and we'll continue to do our best to meet the needs of the forecasting community. (And we'll be …. Categories:
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This post provides guidance on how to set and evaluate goals in a work context. I recommend doing this on a monthly basis. Set aside 2-4 hours at the end of each month to go through the steps outlined below. Your manager should invest about 1 hour to give feedback. Why set goals? Identify and […]...
Coming up with options is one of the critical steps in any decision-making process. Brainstorming is a useful tool to explore the options space. This post illustrates how to do it. People who have trouble coming up with good ideas, if they’re telling you the truth, will tell you they don’t have very many bad […]...
Cultivating a list of “life principles” can help you discover what you want and how you can align your actions with your values. It enables you to bring your unseen and unquestioned perspectives and ways of being into the open where you can critically examine and change them. I started working on my own list […]...
Giving others feedback is critical to help them succeed. It’s also really difficult, both for the giver and the receiver. Here are some pointers on how to do well in both roles. How to give feedback Goal: Provide outside perspective and encourage effective future behaviour. Step 1: Permission. Ask the Receiver whether you can give […]...
In this post, I’m sharing the learning map that I’m using to acquire a strong coaching skill set. After some deliberation, I decided to pursue the first year as a self-guided learning project instead of getting formal credentials. To set myself up for success, I wanted to get clear at the outset on my motivation […]...
In early 2019, I felt stuck in my career and took this as an opportunity to reflect on my situation and career prospects. Here, I’m sharing the framework that emerged from this period. I’ve removed personal content so you can directly apply it to your own career. The framework helps you work through a complex […]...
Mistakes are one of our best opportunities to learn and improve. Unfortunately, we’re conditioned to associate mistakes with failure instead of opportunity and to deny or turn away from them. This way, we end up staying the same and likely making the same mistakes over and over again. To start learning from mistakes requires a […]...
Being able to show up energized and motivated every day is necessary to achieve big goals and enjoy the process. This post presents a tool to benchmark your current energy levels as the basis for improvement. Energy levels are a complex issue where causal links are hard to establish. There are too many variables at […]...
Self-care is challenging yet essential for almost anything you care about. In this post, I’m going to address why I think that’s true, and offer a few strategies that you can implement to manage yourself more deliberately. If you’d prefer a more animated version of this post, you can find a recording of my talk […]...
One thing I’ve changed in 2020 has been to shift (even) more time towards structured reflection. The volatile and sometimes chaotic environment this year provided a helpful nudge for what would have been worthwhile without it already. In this post, I’ll elaborate on the benefits of reflection as I currently see them and suggest ways […]...
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Elections – U.S. – 2024 U.S. Elections,
Elections – U.S. – President
Closes: November 05, 2024 at 12:11 AM UTC
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As of June 2023, incumbent US president Joe Biden has declared that he will seek the Democratic Party's nomination for the 2024 US Presidential Election. On the Republican side, frontrunners include former US President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Because both parties use (mostly) first-past-the-post to select …. Categories:
Elections – U.S. – 2024 U.S.
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Elections – U.S. – 2024 U.S. Elections,
Elections – U.S. – President
Closes: November 05, 2024 at 12:11 AM UTC
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Categories:
Elections – U.S. – 2024 U.S. Elections,
Elections – U.S. – President
Closes: November 05, 2024 at 12:11 AM UTC
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Categories:
Elections – U.S. – 2024 U.S. Elections,
Elections – U.S. – President
Closes: November 05, 2024 at 12:11 AM UTC
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