forcing people to develop a forecasting record to make claims about their non profit starts to get deep into concern trolling territory imo. Like I get where it comes from but this is mostly the type of thing that just reenforces the status quo.
I think the thing Zac is asking for is to just not put a forecasting claim as your headline fundraising claim. You can share what your plans are and what your models are and why you think you are cost-effective, but if you make claims that rely pretty heavily on forecasting skill, where the methodology is “trust me bro”, then I do think the only way to have that be taken seriously would be if you did have a strong forecasting track record. If you don’t have that, it doesn’t convey much information.
I mean yea I get where he is coming from. A few things.
1. Not at all clear to me that success in pred markets has anything to do with running a good company/nonprofit. 2. Not at all clear to me success in pred markets means you would be good at predicting success of your company/nonproft 3. Even if it did, seems pretty easy for a bad faith actor to hire out or otherwise fake their prediction success. unless you really start gatekeeping what that means, like oh I personally know you and know you didn’t create 7 manifold accounts until you hit big to start with 100k mana, which would again just be a weird form of in groupism. 4. does this mean as a successful quant trader for a company I can say “trust me bro i made 15 mil on bond options”, or does this only apply to rat adjacent prediction markets?
and even if 1⁄2 were true, still not clear to me that would imply we should be encouraging people who have big dreams that they should first build credibility on manifold, because that’s a lot of time to spend on something just to signal? Unless you also just happen to think getting really good at prediction markets is actually a useful skill for running an ai charity?
Don’t disagree really that it’s weird to put such a concrete number on a gut feeling in the title of your post asking for money, but I really don’t think we should selectively allow this handwaving for people who are diamond in manifold and start pushing community members to goodhart in this way. Like I’m overstating the case a bit. I obviously think you should somewhat update on claims based on the person. BUT, I really think ea/lw does this more than enough already, esp in the sense of like, is this person “successful in the ways EAs/LWs consider” (pred markets being an obvious one where almost know one outside of these communities cares but gives you a bunch of status in the community).
I didn’t ask about prediction markets, just any kind of forecasting track record!
For example, “here’s our last few annual reports, you can see that our forecasts of program cost and success are quantified and usually accurate” would lend much more credibility to the headline claims in this post.
forcing people to develop a forecasting record to make claims about their non profit starts to get deep into concern trolling territory imo. Like I get where it comes from but this is mostly the type of thing that just reenforces the status quo.
I think the thing Zac is asking for is to just not put a forecasting claim as your headline fundraising claim. You can share what your plans are and what your models are and why you think you are cost-effective, but if you make claims that rely pretty heavily on forecasting skill, where the methodology is “trust me bro”, then I do think the only way to have that be taken seriously would be if you did have a strong forecasting track record. If you don’t have that, it doesn’t convey much information.
I mean yea I get where he is coming from. A few things.
1. Not at all clear to me that success in pred markets has anything to do with running a good company/nonprofit.
2. Not at all clear to me success in pred markets means you would be good at predicting success of your company/nonproft
3. Even if it did, seems pretty easy for a bad faith actor to hire out or otherwise fake their prediction success. unless you really start gatekeeping what that means, like oh I personally know you and know you didn’t create 7 manifold accounts until you hit big to start with 100k mana, which would again just be a weird form of in groupism.
4. does this mean as a successful quant trader for a company I can say “trust me bro i made 15 mil on bond options”, or does this only apply to rat adjacent prediction markets?
and even if 1⁄2 were true, still not clear to me that would imply we should be encouraging people who have big dreams that they should first build credibility on manifold, because that’s a lot of time to spend on something just to signal? Unless you also just happen to think getting really good at prediction markets is actually a useful skill for running an ai charity?
Don’t disagree really that it’s weird to put such a concrete number on a gut feeling in the title of your post asking for money, but I really don’t think we should selectively allow this handwaving for people who are diamond in manifold and start pushing community members to goodhart in this way. Like I’m overstating the case a bit. I obviously think you should somewhat update on claims based on the person. BUT, I really think ea/lw does this more than enough already, esp in the sense of like, is this person “successful in the ways EAs/LWs consider” (pred markets being an obvious one where almost know one outside of these communities cares but gives you a bunch of status in the community).
I didn’t ask about prediction markets, just any kind of forecasting track record!
For example, “here’s our last few annual reports, you can see that our forecasts of program cost and success are quantified and usually accurate” would lend much more credibility to the headline claims in this post.