I assume that many of you have seen that Good Judgement is running a September Superforecasting Workshop. Although I would love to attend, the tickets are $1250 which is so far beyond my reach it's not even worth considering.
So what I wanted to put to the community was the idea of running a cheaper workshop or even a conference. There are some really amazing predicters in the community so I honestly think it would be possible to match the quality of the official workshop. I am happy to do the legwork in organizing it if people are interested? Apologies if this is not the place to put this.
On a related note, has anyone been lucky enough to attend the official workshop? If so, what was it like, did you feel it was worth it? Would love to hear your thoughts!
yes, some objective metric is needed, upon reaching which the superforecaster is given access to the course. Or create a network of superforecasters who can share their practices. Community for improvement, on the example of LessWrong
The workshops help to fund Good Judgement, I assume. The company has to generate revenue somehow in order to support their sizeable staff doing important work. A reasonable budget would mean expensive workshop prices, I guess. Remember, it requires labor costs, cost of overheads, cost of taxes, and profits. So if a company of say 50 has 30% of its revenue to pay its staff, then that means revenue has to be approximately $8,333,333. So if there's a workshop monthly and 100 attendees that pay for each one, that means each ticket costs $6,944. Reduce this because the company probably makes revenue in other various ways other than workshops.
PS: There's a podcast episode somewhere out there where a Superforecaster by the name of Michael Story talks about how he helps to run workshops to help people pick up the skill and improve on forecasting. He says base rate work was one of the more measurable error reducers. Not only that, but also knowing when to adjust based on whether or not the current circumstances are reflected in the base rate. Yada, yada. It's all fascinating stuff.
One thing I forgot to consider about my proposal: if the reward for forecasters is worth a substantial amount, it encourages stronger competition between user. This probably defeats the purpouse of the site, as less people would be inclined to provide a rationale for their forecasts to help others.
I had almost forgotten about this post so thanks everyone for reviving it! I really appreciate the links too @probahilliby, have bookmarked them all!
To add to the post in light of the comments, I should make clear that I am not disparaging GJ for charging so much, it's a business after all. I was more saying that it was out of reach for me and likely many others.
In any case, maybe an intermediary suggestion would be a discord or telegram group for forecasters. People could share links and thoughts outside of just predictions. It would then be possible to arrange speakers and events also. It could be done informally and like I say I am willing to take on the lion's share of the work if this was interesting to people.
I would be grateful if you guys could tag anyone that might find this interesting. If we can get even 10 I will set stuff up to do it.
@James-B You're welcome. Do check out the third link because that's what's most like what you're talking about, I suppose. What do you mean lion's share? In other ways, what is your precise vision?
I had a look at the third link, it seems like they are a closed group though.
By lion's share, I essentially mean everything, as long as there is interest from people.
I think it would be difficult to give a precise vision but what I am going for is essentially a social group for forecasters. It would be a place to share links and collate resources on forecasting such as those you have sent, to discuss across platforms (rather than just gjopen because there are many), to host events such as having some superforecasters give some talks, to provide a place to form teams. I think it would also be helpful to have a location to discuss general events outside the confines of particular questions, for example, the Ukraine-Russia conflict as a whole.
To my mind, something like discord would work very well. I dislike facebook and it requires sharing more information than people might be comfortable with.
@James-B Sounds very hedgehog-y but I like the concept in theory. @tabhuth may have an interest or valuable two cents on this topic. At any rate, do check out https://metaforecast.org/. It's not necessarily a singular forum for forecasters but a singular forum of forecasts.
This is a personal preference, but I thrive in the anonymity and humility of working alone. Yes, accuracy can be improved with teamwork and shared information, but I just have a hunch that a space like you describe would not remarkably change anything and likely to attract those who think they know more than average / know it all.
So what I wanted to put to the community was the idea of running a cheaper workshop or even a conference. There are some really amazing predicters in the community so I honestly think it would be possible to match the quality of the official workshop. I am happy to do the legwork in organizing it if people are interested? Apologies if this is not the place to put this.
On a related note, has anyone been lucky enough to attend the official workshop? If so, what was it like, did you feel it was worth it? Would love to hear your thoughts!
The workshops help to fund Good Judgement, I assume. The company has to generate revenue somehow in order to support their sizeable staff doing important work. A reasonable budget would mean expensive workshop prices, I guess. Remember, it requires labor costs, cost of overheads, cost of taxes, and profits. So if a company of say 50 has 30% of its revenue to pay its staff, then that means revenue has to be approximately $8,333,333. So if there's a workshop monthly and 100 attendees that pay for each one, that means each ticket costs $6,944. Reduce this because the company probably makes revenue in other various ways other than workshops.
@James-B @DR-R3W @404_NOT_FOUND
On a tangent, check out the following resources:
https://www.swiftcentre.org/
https://www.youtube.com/c/GlobalGuessing/videos
https://samotsvety.org/
https://tellingthefuture.substack.com/
https://www.samstack.io/
https://nonprophetspod.wordpress.com/
PS: There's a podcast episode somewhere out there where a Superforecaster by the name of Michael Story talks about how he helps to run workshops to help people pick up the skill and improve on forecasting. He says base rate work was one of the more measurable error reducers. Not only that, but also knowing when to adjust based on whether or not the current circumstances are reflected in the base rate. Yada, yada. It's all fascinating stuff.
One thing I forgot to consider about my proposal: if the reward for forecasters is worth a substantial amount, it encourages stronger competition between user. This probably defeats the purpouse of the site, as less people would be inclined to provide a rationale for their forecasts to help others.
To add to the post in light of the comments, I should make clear that I am not disparaging GJ for charging so much, it's a business after all. I was more saying that it was out of reach for me and likely many others.
In any case, maybe an intermediary suggestion would be a discord or telegram group for forecasters. People could share links and thoughts outside of just predictions. It would then be possible to arrange speakers and events also. It could be done informally and like I say I am willing to take on the lion's share of the work if this was interesting to people.
I would be grateful if you guys could tag anyone that might find this interesting. If we can get even 10 I will set stuff up to do it.
This would be cool
I had a look at the third link, it seems like they are a closed group though.
By lion's share, I essentially mean everything, as long as there is interest from people.
I think it would be difficult to give a precise vision but what I am going for is essentially a social group for forecasters. It would be a place to share links and collate resources on forecasting such as those you have sent, to discuss across platforms (rather than just gjopen because there are many), to host events such as having some superforecasters give some talks, to provide a place to form teams. I think it would also be helpful to have a location to discuss general events outside the confines of particular questions, for example, the Ukraine-Russia conflict as a whole.
To my mind, something like discord would work very well. I dislike facebook and it requires sharing more information than people might be comfortable with.
@James-B Sounds very hedgehog-y but I like the concept in theory. @tabhuth may have an interest or valuable two cents on this topic. At any rate, do check out https://metaforecast.org/. It's not necessarily a singular forum for forecasters but a singular forum of forecasts.
This is a personal preference, but I thrive in the anonymity and humility of working alone. Yes, accuracy can be improved with teamwork and shared information, but I just have a hunch that a space like you describe would not remarkably change anything and likely to attract those who think they know more than average / know it all.