mabramov

Summary EA and rationalists got enamoured with forecasting and prediction markets and made them part of the culture, but this hasn’t proven very useful, yet it continues to receive substantial EA funding. We should cut it off. My Experience with Forecasting For a while, I was the number one forecaster on Manifold. This lasted for about a year until I stopped just over 2 years ago. To this day, despite quitting, I’m still #8 on the platform. Additionally, I have done well on real-money prediction markets (Polymarket), earning mid-5 figures and winning a few AI bets. I say this to suggest that I would gain status from forecasting being seen as useful, but I think, to the contrary, that the EA community should stop funding it. I’ve written a few comments throughout the years that I didn’t think forecasting was worth funding. You can see some of these here and here. Finally, I have gotten around to making this full post. Solution Seeking a Problem When talking about forecasting, people often ask questions like “How can we leverage forecasting into better decisions?” This is the wrong way to go about solving problems. You solve problems by starting with the problem, and then you see which tools are useful for solving it. The way people talk about forecasting is very similar to how people talk about cryptocurrency/blockchain. People have a tool they want to use, whether that be cryptocurrency or forecasting, and then try to solve problems with it because they really believe in the solution, but I think this is misguided. You have to start with the problem you are trying to solve, not the solution you want to apply. A lot of work has been put into building up forecasting, making platforms, hosting tournaments, etc., on the assumption that it was instrumentally useful, but this is pretty dangerous to continue without concrete gains. We’ve Funded Enough Forecasting that We Should See Tangible Gains It’s not the case that forecasting/prediction markets are merely in