(3) Self Driving—I stand by what I said, nothing to expand on. I believe that Tesla and Waymo, at least, already have self driving tech good enough, so this is mostly about institutional acceptance.
The problem with some of your predictions is that I don’t know how to operationalize them. For example, does L4 self-driving count? What about L3? What source can be used to resolve this question? I’m not currently aware of any source that counts the number of trips done in automobiles in the US, and tabulates them by car type (or self-driving status). So, to bet, we’d either need to get a source, or come up with a different way of operationalizing the question.
(As an aside, I have found that a very high fraction of predictions—even among people who care a lot about betting—tend to be extremely underspecified. I think it’s a non-trivial skill to know how to operationalize bets, and most people just aren’t very good at it without lots of practice. That’s not a criticism of you :). However, I do prefer that you state your predictions very precisely because otherwise we’re just not going to be able to do the bet.)
I think you’re 100% right. Most (>>80%) of the bets I see on Long Bets, or predictions on MetaCalculus, are underspecified to the point where where a human mediator would have to make a judgement call that can be considered unfair to someone. I don’t expect that to change no matter how much work I do, unless I make bets on specific statistics from well known sources, e.g. the stock market, or the CIA World Factbook.
There are possible futures where prediction (3) is obvious. For example, if someone predicted that 50% of trips will be self driving in 2021 (many people did predict that 5 years ago) we can easily prove them wrong without having to debate whether Tesla is L2 or L5 and whether that matters. Teslas are not 50% of the cars on the road, nor are Waymos, so you can easily see that most trips in 2021 are not self driving by any definition. I think there are also future worlds were 95% of cars and trips are L5, most cars can legally autonomously drive anywhere without any humans inside, etc, and in that world there isn’t much to debate about unless you’re really petty. So we could make bets hoping that things will be that obvious, but I don’t think either of us want to do the work to avoid this kind of ambiguity.
I’m happy to consider my bets as paid in Bayes points without any need for future adjudication. So, for all the Bayes points, I’d love to hear what your equivalent predictions are for 2026.
For what it’s worth, here’s my revised (3): Greater than 10% of cars on the road will be legally capable of either L4/L5 OR legally L2/L3 but disengagements will be uncommon, less than once in a typical trip. (Meaning, if you watch a video from the AI DRIVR YouTube channel, there’s less than one disengagement per 20 minutes of driving time.)
I think you’re 100% right. Most (>>80%) of the bets I see on Long Bets, or predictions on MetaCalculus, are underspecified to the point where where a human mediator would have to make a judgement call that can be considered unfair to someone.
To be clear, I have spent a ton of time on Metaculus and I find this impression incorrect. I have spent comparatively little time on Long Bets but I think it’s also wrong there for the most part.
I think you may have accidentally called out parties who are, in my opinion, exemplars of what solid prediction platforms should look like. There are far, far worse parties that you could have called out.
The problem with some of your predictions is that I don’t know how to operationalize them. For example, does L4 self-driving count? What about L3? What source can be used to resolve this question? I’m not currently aware of any source that counts the number of trips done in automobiles in the US, and tabulates them by car type (or self-driving status). So, to bet, we’d either need to get a source, or come up with a different way of operationalizing the question.
(As an aside, I have found that a very high fraction of predictions—even among people who care a lot about betting—tend to be extremely underspecified. I think it’s a non-trivial skill to know how to operationalize bets, and most people just aren’t very good at it without lots of practice. That’s not a criticism of you :). However, I do prefer that you state your predictions very precisely because otherwise we’re just not going to be able to do the bet.)
I think you’re 100% right. Most (>>80%) of the bets I see on Long Bets, or predictions on MetaCalculus, are underspecified to the point where where a human mediator would have to make a judgement call that can be considered unfair to someone. I don’t expect that to change no matter how much work I do, unless I make bets on specific statistics from well known sources, e.g. the stock market, or the CIA World Factbook.
There are possible futures where prediction (3) is obvious. For example, if someone predicted that 50% of trips will be self driving in 2021 (many people did predict that 5 years ago) we can easily prove them wrong without having to debate whether Tesla is L2 or L5 and whether that matters. Teslas are not 50% of the cars on the road, nor are Waymos, so you can easily see that most trips in 2021 are not self driving by any definition. I think there are also future worlds were 95% of cars and trips are L5, most cars can legally autonomously drive anywhere without any humans inside, etc, and in that world there isn’t much to debate about unless you’re really petty. So we could make bets hoping that things will be that obvious, but I don’t think either of us want to do the work to avoid this kind of ambiguity.
I’m happy to consider my bets as paid in Bayes points without any need for future adjudication. So, for all the Bayes points, I’d love to hear what your equivalent predictions are for 2026.
For what it’s worth, here’s my revised (3): Greater than 10% of cars on the road will be legally capable of either L4/L5 OR legally L2/L3 but disengagements will be uncommon, less than once in a typical trip. (Meaning, if you watch a video from the AI DRIVR YouTube channel, there’s less than one disengagement per 20 minutes of driving time.)
To be clear, I have spent a ton of time on Metaculus and I find this impression incorrect. I have spent comparatively little time on Long Bets but I think it’s also wrong there for the most part.
I think you may have accidentally called out parties who are, in my opinion, exemplars of what solid prediction platforms should look like. There are far, far worse parties that you could have called out.