Tl;dr: We are wondering whether there might be more value in forecasting as a popularized educational activity than seems to be the consensus. Looking for explicit opinions and feedback.

We are a team working on popularizing evidence- and rationality-based approaches in the Czech Republic, including forecasting. When considering and consulting our previous and upcoming projects, we came to realize that there seems to be too little attention paid to forecasting as a skill-building exercise.

In this sense, we agree with David Althaus and kokotajlod’s older post regarding the mainstreaming of forecasting. While it’s not society’s biggest issue, we identify especially with the second of their points, which can be expanded as follows:

Forecasting builds an explicit link from its participants to a ground truth which can (with varying success, depending on the context) be objectively claimed.
This link can serve as a grounding rod for rationalization efforts which can be viewed as (otherwise) value-neutral.

What’s more, forecasting principles can be used and trained across various domains to meet people wherever they are most open to learning - from geopolitical questions to very personal ones. Additionally, using probabilistic forecasting in personal questions, some important aspects of rationality can be internalized quite effectively. I point to Julia Galef’s approach of satisficing using subjective criteria and qualitative probability expressions to get beyond the initial issue of not having any predictions at all.

At the same time, this satisficing need not be a significant drawback to the benefits that could flow from a wider diffusion of forecasting. Whether it be depolarization in politics or laying the groundwork for an epistemic infrastructure so that we can more consciously build shared mental models, the investment necessary to start reaping rewards could be quite small. Most concretely, this prior is based on the results from Chang et al. - we think positive spillovers could be achieved even with modest interventions. In fact, just sticking with the previously referenced post, already types 13-16 in Julia Galef’s taxonomy could all have positive societal externalities if taken up more broadly.

Of course, the answer to the implicit question which seems to be rearing its head:

“Why aren’t we trying to make pe...

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