Upvoted, and: Why new year’s predictions? Why not new day’s predictions, or new week’s predictions? Months? Seasons? Book pages? TV episodes? That’s not a critique of this post specifically. I just don’t see very much of it. Also, why limit yourself to existing fields and “miscellaneous”? Can we construct topic areas around which to ask weirder questions / make weirder bets and predictions? What are some of the strangest topic areas we can invent? What about topic areas whose most accurate description would lose a lot of information if it were condensed into any existing English word?
(Also, unlike book page or tv episode predictions, the predictions in this post are typically about large-scale processes rather than immediate concrete realities, e.g. like those of your “personal” category. What if, instead of ‘everywhere’ and ‘right here’ predictions, we had ‘over there’ predictions as well?)
I’m not suggesting the topics would need entire sentences, but even just the combination of three or four words might give you access to strange topic spaces. Psycheconomics predictions, anyone? “Psychenomics” doesn’t mean anything to me in advance, but maybe with a bit of experience searching we can categorize information to “psychenomics” semi-arbitrarily and get a kinesthetic feel for a previously unseen territory.
The demarcation of our disciplines, I’m assuming, is not a feature of the world; in alternate timelines, we do not distinguish between psychology and neurology, or history and anthropology, or computer science and mathematics. Those seem related, so it may be intuitive to treat them the same, but why not have categories for crossdisciplinary or discipline-queer questions/bets/predictions?
What is the best proportion of personal/over-there/everywhere predictions? How long did it take you to write these predictions? When you write one, how deep is your thinking behind it? How often do you make predictions like these? Only once a year? Couldn’t you do better? Should you carry notebooks with you everywhere all the time, prepared to write predictions? Should you use an interval timer to force you to make a prediction whenever it rings? Should I limit how much time in the day that I spend on writing predictions? Could all the questions I’m asking related to prediction writing be its own field of study?
Why new year’s predictions? Why not new day’s predictions, or new week’s predictions?
In general, it is easier to make a list of predictions and gauge uncertainty at one time. It takes a lot of effort, and so is generally done sparingly. The beginning of the calendar year makes a good Schelling point to do that work, especially given that there are lots of other “new year” rituals it folds into.
Couldn’t you do better? Should you carry notebooks with you everywhere all the time, prepared to write predictions? Should you use an interval timer to force you to make a prediction whenever it rings?
There is probably a market outside of Less Wrong (definitely within Less Wrong and the ratcom) for some sort of app or service that reminds people to make predictions, gauge uncertainty, and then update those predictions at time intervals. Think “Anki cards” but for predictions. The biggest hinderance is mental effort and the fact that the rewards are so nebulous (“oh wow, I’ve become good at gauging uncertainty thats [socially] useful for… what exactly?”)
https://predictionbook.com/ has a skeleton that could be extended with prompts for belief updates. It already has prompts for adjudication of your previous predictions.
Upvoted, and: Why new year’s predictions? Why not new day’s predictions, or new week’s predictions? Months? Seasons? Book pages? TV episodes? That’s not a critique of this post specifically. I just don’t see very much of it.
Also, why limit yourself to existing fields and “miscellaneous”? Can we construct topic areas around which to ask weirder questions / make weirder bets and predictions? What are some of the strangest topic areas we can invent? What about topic areas whose most accurate description would lose a lot of information if it were condensed into any existing English word?
(Also, unlike book page or tv episode predictions, the predictions in this post are typically about large-scale processes rather than immediate concrete realities, e.g. like those of your “personal” category. What if, instead of ‘everywhere’ and ‘right here’ predictions, we had ‘over there’ predictions as well?)
I’m not suggesting the topics would need entire sentences, but even just the combination of three or four words might give you access to strange topic spaces. Psycheconomics predictions, anyone? “Psychenomics” doesn’t mean anything to me in advance, but maybe with a bit of experience searching we can categorize information to “psychenomics” semi-arbitrarily and get a kinesthetic feel for a previously unseen territory.
The demarcation of our disciplines, I’m assuming, is not a feature of the world; in alternate timelines, we do not distinguish between psychology and neurology, or history and anthropology, or computer science and mathematics. Those seem related, so it may be intuitive to treat them the same, but why not have categories for crossdisciplinary or discipline-queer questions/bets/predictions?
What is the best proportion of personal/over-there/everywhere predictions? How long did it take you to write these predictions? When you write one, how deep is your thinking behind it? How often do you make predictions like these? Only once a year? Couldn’t you do better? Should you carry notebooks with you everywhere all the time, prepared to write predictions? Should you use an interval timer to force you to make a prediction whenever it rings? Should I limit how much time in the day that I spend on writing predictions? Could all the questions I’m asking related to prediction writing be its own field of study?
In general, it is easier to make a list of predictions and gauge uncertainty at one time. It takes a lot of effort, and so is generally done sparingly. The beginning of the calendar year makes a good Schelling point to do that work, especially given that there are lots of other “new year” rituals it folds into.
There is probably a market outside of Less Wrong (definitely within Less Wrong and the ratcom) for some sort of app or service that reminds people to make predictions, gauge uncertainty, and then update those predictions at time intervals. Think “Anki cards” but for predictions. The biggest hinderance is mental effort and the fact that the rewards are so nebulous (“oh wow, I’ve become good at gauging uncertainty thats [socially] useful for… what exactly?”)
https://predictionbook.com/ has a skeleton that could be extended with prompts for belief updates. It already has prompts for adjudication of your previous predictions.