Podcasts about superforecasting

Book by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner released in 2015

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Best podcasts about superforecasting

Latest podcast episodes about superforecasting

3 Takeaways
The Science and Skill of Superforecasting (#230)

3 Takeaways

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2024 20:47 Transcription Available


Imagine how much better your decision making would be if you could better predict the future. It's possible, with superforecasting. In fact, a team of superforecasters won a forecasting tournament conducted by the U.S. intelligence community. What do superforecasters actually do, and how can you become a better forecaster? Don't miss this talk with superforecaster, Warren Hatch.

James Allen On F1
17: Superforecasting - What Will Happen In F1 In 2025?

James Allen On F1

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2024 55:35


Who will win the 2025 F1 Drivers' Championship? Will Lewis Hamilton score more points than Charles Leclerc? What impact will the struggles of car manufacturers, especially Europeans, have on F1 next year? How might geopolitics impact on F1, for example in the Middle East and Asia ? For our final podcast of the year, we thought that rather than looking backwards with yet another Season Review – we would immediately throw it forwards and Superforecast F1 in 2025. Joining James to look into the future are Jon Noble, Ben Hunt and Jake Boxall-Legge. Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X/Twitter or jamesallenonf1@autosport.com. A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport

Enter the Boardroom with Nurole
86. Dan Gardner (part two) - how boards get big things done

Enter the Boardroom with Nurole

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2024 40:43


Dan Gardner is the international best-selling author of Superforecasting, How Big Things Get Done, Risk and Future Babble. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What are the key things boards need to get things done on time, within budget? (1:06) Can you explain how board members can “build with lego”? (4:25) What would you say to boards that don't have climate risk at the top of their agenda? (7:16) How does our emotional response impact our assessment of risk? (10:44) When should board members use their gut, and when, their intuition? (18:01) Does gender impact risk perception, and what are the boardroom implications? (20:39) How do the availability, anchoring and representative heuristics impact our decision making? (25:17) ⚡The Lightning Round ⚡(35:26) Show notes and transcript available at https://www.nurole.com/news-and-guides

Enter the Boardroom with Nurole
85. Dan Gardner (part one) - superforecasting and fat tail risks

Enter the Boardroom with Nurole

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2024 41:57


Dan Gardner is the international best-selling author of Superforecasting, How Big Things Get Done, Risk and Future Babble. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What are the key insights from Superforecasting for board members? (1:15) Can you expand on the idea of probabilistic thinking? (10:00) Practically, how can board members apply concepts like epistemic humility and base rates to their decision making? (12:56) Can board members be victims of their own success? (14:43) Do people account sufficiently for luck in previous successes? (17:04) How can boards make sure members get sufficient feedback on their decisions? (20:53) How can boards assess a prospective member's judgement? (23:55) Why do smart people consistently underestimate the costs of projects, especially fat tail risks? (25:01) How can board members use base rates for IT and building projects to challenge and support? (31:52) Have you established any base rates for budgeting? (37:51) Show notes and transcript available at https://www.nurole.com/news-and-guides

Scaling Superforecasting: AI Forecasting Tournaments & the Road to Epistemic Security, with Deger Turan, CEO of Metaculus

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2024 116:21


Nathan explores the cutting-edge world of AI-powered forecasting with Deger Turan, CEO of Metaculus. In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, we discuss how AI is revolutionizing prediction markets, the potential for AI to outperform human forecasters, and Metaculus's ambitious new AI forecasting benchmark tournament. Join us for an insightful conversation about the future of decision-making and collective intelligence. Participate in Metaculus' first of its kind bot forecasting tournament: https://www.metaculus.com/aib/ Apply to join over 400 founders and execs in the Turpentine Network: https://hmplogxqz0y.typeform.com/to/JCkphVqj RECOMMENDED PODCAST: 1 to 100 | Hypergrowth Companies Worth Joining Every week we sit down with the founder of a hyper-growth company you should consider joining. Our goal is to give you the inside story behind breakout, early stage companies potentially worth betting your career on. This season, discover how the founders of Modal Labs, Clay, Mercor, and more built their products, cultures, and companies. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1762756034 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/70NOWtWDY995C8qDqojxGw RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Second Opinion A new podcast for health-tech insiders from Christina Farr of the Second Opinion newsletter. Join Christina Farr, Luba Greenwood, and Ash Zenooz every week as they challenge industry experts with tough questions about the best bets in health-tech. Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1759267211 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A8NwQE976s32zdBbZw6bv SPONSORS: Building an enterprise-ready SaaS app? WorkOS has got you covered with easy-to-integrate APIs for SAML, SCIM, and more. Join top startups like Vercel, Perplexity, Jasper & Webflow in powering your app with WorkOS. Enjoy a free tier for up to 1M users! Start now at https://bit.ly/WorkOS-Turpentine-Network 80,000 Hours offers free one-on-one career advising for Cognitive Revolution listeners aiming to tackle global challenges, especially in AI. They connect high-potential individuals with experts, opportunities, and personalized career plans to maximize positive impact. Apply for a free call at https://80000hours.org/cognitiverevolution to accelerate your career and contribute to solving pressing AI-related issues. The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://bit.ly/BraveTCR Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/ Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist. CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) About the Show (00:00:22) Sponsor: WorkOS (00:01:22) About the Episode (00:04:47) Introduction and Background (00:08:42) Deger's Journey to Forecasting (00:13:06) Current State of Forecasting (00:20:23) Sponsors: 80,000 Hours | Brave (00:22:55) Overview of Metaculous (00:23:30) AI Forecasting Research Papers (00:35:44) Sponsors: Omneky | Squad (00:37:31) AI Forecasting Benchmark Tournament (00:44:01) Improving Forecasting Accuracy (00:51:56) Scoring System and Tournament Rules (01:04:17) AI Forecasting Benchmark Series Details (01:11:03) Tournament Structure and Participation (01:17:07) Consistency in AI Forecasting (01:34:36) Risks and Challenges in Forecasting (01:42:43) Consensus Illusion and Policy Making (01:53:55) Outro

Increments
#69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability

Increments

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2024 105:09


After four episodes spent fawning over Scott Alexander's "Non-libertarian FAQ", we turn around and attack the good man instead. In this episode we respond to Scott's piece "In Continued Defense of Non-Frequentist Probabilities", and respond to each of his five arguments defending Bayesian probability. Like moths to a flame, we apparently cannot let the probability subject slide, sorry people. But the good news is that before getting there, you get to here about some therapists and pedophiles (therapeutic pedophelia?). What's the probability that Scott changes his mind based on this episode? We discuss Why we're not defending frequentism as a philosophy The Bayesian interpretation of probability The importance of being explicit about assumptions Why it's insane to think that 50% should mean both "equally likely" and "I have no effing idea". Why Scott's interpretation of probability is crippling our ability to communicate How super are Superforecasters? Marginal versus conditional guarantees (this is exactly as boring as it sounds) How to pronounce Samotsvety and are they Italian or Eastern European or what? References In Continued Defense Of Non-Frequentist Probabilities (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-non-frequentist) Article on superforecasting by Gavin Leech and Misha Yugadin (https://progress.institute/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/) Essay by Michael Story on superforecasting (https://www.samstack.io/p/five-questions-for-michael-story) Existential risk tournament: Superforecasters vs AI doomers (https://forecastingresearch.org/news/results-from-the-2022-existential-risk-persuasion-tournament) and Ben's blogpost about it (https://benchugg.com/writing/superforecasting/) The Good Judgment Project (https://goodjudgment.com/) Quotes During the pandemic, Dominic Cummings said some of the most useful stuff that he received and circulated in the British government was not forecasting. It was qualitative information explaining the general model of what's going on, which enabled decision-makers to think more clearly about their options for action and the likely consequences. If you're worried about a new disease outbreak, you don't just want a percentage probability estimate about future case numbers, you want an explanation of how the virus is likely to spread, what you can do about it, how you can prevent it. - Michael Story (https://www.samstack.io/p/five-questions-for-michael-story) Is it bad that one term can mean both perfect information (as in 1) and total lack of information (as in 3)? No. This is no different from how we discuss things when we're not using probability. Do vaccines cause autism? No. Does drinking monkey blood cause autism? Also no. My evidence on the vaccines question is dozens of excellent studies, conducted so effectively that we're as sure about this as we are about anything in biology. My evidence on the monkey blood question is that nobody's ever proposed this and it would be weird if it were true. Still, it's perfectly fine to say the single-word answer “no” to both of them to describe where I currently stand. If someone wants to know how much evidence/certainty is behind my “no”, they can ask, and I'll tell them. - SA, Section 2 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your credence in Bayesianism? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

20 Minute Books
Superforecasting - Book Summary

20 Minute Books

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2024 27:52


"The Art and Science of Prediction" Transcript and written book summary available here for free

The Nonlinear Library
LW - Superforecasting the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic by DanielFilan

The Nonlinear Library

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2024 2:15


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Superforecasting the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic, published by DanielFilan on March 13, 2024 on LessWrong. The Good Judgement Project got some superforecasters to retrocast whether COVID started via zoonotic spillover or a lab leak. They in aggregate gave a 75% chance of zoonosis, but there was a range of views. GJP's executive summary is at the end of this linkpost. Here is a link to the summary of the report on their substack, and here is a link to the full report (which is a total of 6 pages of content). h/t John Halstead for drawing my attention to this. Superforecasters assess that natural zoonosis is three times more likely to be the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic than either a biomedical research-related accident or some other process or mechanism. Asked to assign a probability to what caused the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in human populations, more than 50 Superforecasters engaged in extensive online discussions starting on December 1, 2023. In aggregate, they assessed that the pandemic was: 74% likely to have been caused by natural zoonosis (meaning that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in human populations as the result of the infection of a person with coronavirus directly from a naturally infected non-human animal); 25% likely to have been caused by a biomedical research-related accident (meaning that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in human populations as the result of the accidental infection of a laboratory worker with a natural coronavirus; or the accidental infection of researchers with a natural coronavirus during biomedical fieldwork; or the accidental infection of a laboratory worker with an engineered coronavirus; "research" includes civilian biomedical, biodefense, and bioweapons research); 1% likely to have been caused by some other process or mechanism (to include possibilities like the deliberate release of the virus into human populations, irrespective of whether it was an act in accordance with state policy, or the development of the virus due to drug resistance in humans). The Superforecasters made more than 750 comments when developing their assessments. This survey was conducted in the period from December 2023 to February 2024. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong
LW - Superforecasting the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic by DanielFilan

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2024 2:15


Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Superforecasting the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic, published by DanielFilan on March 13, 2024 on LessWrong. The Good Judgement Project got some superforecasters to retrocast whether COVID started via zoonotic spillover or a lab leak. They in aggregate gave a 75% chance of zoonosis, but there was a range of views. GJP's executive summary is at the end of this linkpost. Here is a link to the summary of the report on their substack, and here is a link to the full report (which is a total of 6 pages of content). h/t John Halstead for drawing my attention to this. Superforecasters assess that natural zoonosis is three times more likely to be the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic than either a biomedical research-related accident or some other process or mechanism. Asked to assign a probability to what caused the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in human populations, more than 50 Superforecasters engaged in extensive online discussions starting on December 1, 2023. In aggregate, they assessed that the pandemic was: 74% likely to have been caused by natural zoonosis (meaning that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in human populations as the result of the infection of a person with coronavirus directly from a naturally infected non-human animal); 25% likely to have been caused by a biomedical research-related accident (meaning that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in human populations as the result of the accidental infection of a laboratory worker with a natural coronavirus; or the accidental infection of researchers with a natural coronavirus during biomedical fieldwork; or the accidental infection of a laboratory worker with an engineered coronavirus; "research" includes civilian biomedical, biodefense, and bioweapons research); 1% likely to have been caused by some other process or mechanism (to include possibilities like the deliberate release of the virus into human populations, irrespective of whether it was an act in accordance with state policy, or the development of the virus due to drug resistance in humans). The Superforecasters made more than 750 comments when developing their assessments. This survey was conducted in the period from December 2023 to February 2024. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Zukunft Denken – Podcast
089 — The Myth of Left and Right, a Conversation with Prof. Hyrum Lewis

Zukunft Denken – Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2024 57:24


Is the political left and right position changing regularly? For many years now, I have been getting more and more uneasy when pundits and journalists use the “left/right” dichotomy. In my lifetime, I have observed numerous political topics that were once at the core of “left” politics that suddenly are named “right” and vice versa. I then came across the book with the very name “The Myth of Left and Right” and it is a terrific read. So I was very excited that one of the authors, Hyrum Lewis agreed to a conversation. Hyrum Lewis is a professor of history at BYU-Idaho and was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He received a PhD from the University of Southern California and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Quillette, RealClearPolitics, The Washington Examiner, and other national publications. His most recent book, The Myth of Left and Right (co-authored with Verlan Lewis) was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Moreover, this episode fits very nicely with the previous episode with Prof. Möllers on liberalism, so if you are a German speaker, please check this one out as well. Political realities do not map to a single variable or descriptor—there is no such thing as a political monism. Are “left” and “right” just post-hoc narratives where we try to construct ideologies that are not actually there? We observe a regular flip-flopping in history; what are prominent examples? “There is no left and right; there are just two tribes, and what these tribes believe and stand for will change quite radically over time since there is no philosophical core uniting the tribe.” I, personally, have a profound problem with the term “progressive”, but more generally, what do these terms even mean: progressivism, conservatism, reactionary, liberal?  “It is a loaded and self-serving term […] what is considered progressive changes from day to day.” “If you don't agree with every policy we believe in […] then you are obviously on the wrong side of history. You are standing against progress.” So, are left and right not a philosophy but rather a tribe?  Is the definition of conservatism maybe easier? There is a nice brief definition: "Conservatism is democracy of the deceased,” Roger Scruton makes the astute observation that there are so many more ways to screw up and so little ways to do right. But does this help in practice?  “Every person on that planet wants to conserve things that are good and change things that are bad. We are all progressive, and we are all conservative. We just don't agree on what is good and what is bad.” What are examples where positions are unclear or change over time. “In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt visited Yosemite and was guided by naturalist John Muir. The two men spent three memorable nights camping, first under the outstretched arms of the Grizzly Giant in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, then in a snowstorm atop five feet of snow near Sentinel Dome, and finally in a meadow near the base of Bridalveil Fall. Their conversations and shared joy with the beauty and magnificence of Yosemite led Roosevelt to expand federal protection of Yosemite, and it inspired him to sign into existence five national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 national bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuges, and 150 national forests.”, Roosevelt, Muir, and the Grace of Place (NPR) Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican. And here again, a “hiccup”: even though Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, he called himself a progressive. In reality, though, if you see someone on the street in a mask, you can predict with high certainty the other political assumptions of this person. How come? Is there now an underlying disposition, or is there not? Or is it much more a phenomenon of tribal or social conformity? Is the left-right model, at least, useful? What can we learn from past US presidents such as Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush in that regard? Is the political discourse at least more reasonable at universities and among “elites”? Or maybe even more troubled and more conforming to their very tribe? If “normal” people are in general “moderate” on important topics (like abortion), why do major political parties play for the few on the extreme ends of the opinion spectrum? More generally, some educated people describe themselves as “moderate” or “centrist.” Does this even mean anything, and would it be desirable? What about “realism” vs. “utopianism”? “Both status quo conservatives and progressive technocrats share a common element: the hostility to open-ended change, guided not by planners but by millions of experiments and trial and error. For both, the goal is stasis, it's just that one group finds it in the past, the other one in the future.”, Virginia Postrel  A lot of these errors are made under the more elementary mistake that we can know, predict, or foresee the future, especially when we take actions. What can we learn from Phil Tetlock and Dan Gardners forecasting studies? “To be a true progressive, you cannot be a progressive” “Our media does not reward granular, careful, and probabilistic analysis.” So, is it not more significant to distinguish between authoritarian and non-authoritarian politicians or political methods? But can we be optimistic about the future when non-tribal podcasters like Joe Rogan or Coleman Hughes have audiences that are larger than most legacy media outlets combined? Is democracy over time the best way to deal with complex situations and challenges? Is there a value in slowness, and are we not just too impatient? References Other Episodes Episode 88: Liberalismus und Freiheitsgrade, ein Gespräch mit Prof. Christoph Möllers Episode 84: (Epistemische) Krisen? Ein Gespräch mit Jan David Zimmermann Episode 80: Wissen, Expertise und Prognose, eine Reflexion Episode 57: Konservativ UND Progressiv Hyrum Lewis Hyrum Lewis at BYU-Idaho Hyrum Lewis, Verlan Lewis, The Myth of Left and Right, Oxford University Press (2022) Hyrum Lewis, It's Time to Retire the Political Spectrum, Quillette (2017) Hyrum Lews Blog Other References Roger Scruton, How to be a conservative, Bloomsbury Continuum (2019) Johan Norberg, Open: The Story of Human Progress, Atlantic Books (2021) Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge Classic Phil Tetlock, Dan Gardner, Superforecasting, Cornerstone Digital (2015) Tim Urban, What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies (2023) Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, Atlantic Books (2020) Roosevelt, Muir, and the Grace of Place Joe Rogan Podcast Coleman Hughes Podcast

Cloud Security Podcast by Google
EP141 Cloud Security Coast to Coast: From 2015 to 2023, What's Changed and What's the Same?

Cloud Security Podcast by Google

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2023 25:28


Guest:  Jeremiah Kung, Global Head of Information Security, AppLovin Topics: Before we dive into all of the awesome cloud migrations you've experienced and your learnings there, could we start with a topic of East vs West CISO mentality? We are talking to more and more CISOs who see the cloud as a net win for security. What's your take on whether the cloud improves security?  We talked about doing some “big” cloud migrations, could you talk about what you learned back in 2015 about the “right” way to do a cloud migration and how you've applied those lessons since?  How are you approaching securing clouds differently in 2023 (vs the dark past of 2015)? What advice would you give your peers to get out of the “saying no” mentality and into a better collaborative mode?  On the topic of giving advice to people who haven't asked for it, what advice would you give to teams who are stuck in 1990s thinking when it comes to lift and shifting their security technology stack to cloud?  Resources: EP104 CISO Walks Into the Cloud: And The Magic Starts to Happen! EP129 How CISO Cloud Dreams and Realities Collide EP104 CISO Walks Into the Cloud: And The Magic Starts to Happen! EP11 Preparing for Cloud Migrations from a CISO Perspective, Part 2 “How CISOs need to adapt their mental models for cloud security” blog “Superforecasting” book “American Generalship” book  

Economics Explained
How Ben Bernanke can bring Superforecasting to the Bank of England w/ Nicholas Gruen - EP207

Economics Explained

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2023 50:51


Host Gene Tunny chats with Dr. Nicholas Gruen about economic forecasting and what recommendations former US Fed Chair Ben Bernanke could make in his current review of forecasting at the Bank of England. Nicholas, the CEO of Lateral Economics, discusses the shortcomings of economic forecasting and shares his insights into how it can be improved. The conversation was inspired by Nicholas's article in the Financial Times titled "How to Improve Economic Forecasting." The episode is split into two parts, with the second part focusing on the feedback Nicholas received on his article. Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. About this episode's guest: Nicholas GruenDescribed by the Financial Times' Chief Economic Writer Martin Wolf as “a brilliant man who deserves to be better known”, and by former Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner as “Australia's foremost public intellectual”, Dr Nicholas Gruen is a policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator on our economy, society and innovation.What's covered in EP207[00:02:13] Ben Bernanke's review of economic forecasting at the Bank of England. [00:05:23] Hedgehogs and foxes. [00:09:36] Long-term issues with economic forecasting. [00:13:18] Improving economic forecasting techniques. [00:19:29] Forecasting accuracy. [00:24:30] Open sourcing economic forecasting. [00:26:29] Developing a forecasting market. [00:34:21] Tetlockian forecasting tournaments. [00:48:37] Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame at the Bank of England.Links relevant to the conversationVideo versions of the conversations featured in this episode on Nicholas's YouTube channel:https://youtu.be/uJNU8z9148w?si=lk4jfQMWkVx1__Lehttps://youtu.be/KflFvpeC3iI?si=sFOaNruFTMet802jInformation on the Bank of England's Citizens' Panels/Forums:https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/get-involved/citizens-panelshttps://www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/get-involved/citizens-panels/the-uk-economy-insights-from-the-bank-of-englands-citizens-panelsMandarin column in which Nicholas declares former Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane was “my favourite public servant in all the world”:https://www.themandarin.com.au/87423-now-time-complacency-rba-vs-bank-england-edition/Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, and other podcasting platforms.

The Regeneration Will Be Funded
The Next Wave of the Internet with Aaron Wright (Tribute Labs)

The Regeneration Will Be Funded

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2023 61:34


Aaron Wright is the co-founder of Tribute Labs. In conversation with Matthew Monahan. Watch this episode on video: https://youtu.be/2ocEcAYM2SY Watch a preview: https://youtu.be/iCqCSUu8GcY Tribute Labs: https://tributelabs.xyz Aaron's Twitter: https://twitter.com/awrigh01 THE REGENERATION WILL BE FUNDED Ma Earth Website: https://maearth.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@maearthmedia Community Discord: https://maearth.com/community Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/theregeneration/feed.xml EPISODE RESOURCES Superforecasting book: https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-audiobook/dp/B0131HGPQQ/ref=sr_1_1 Flamingo DAO: https://twitter.com/flamingoDAO THE LAO: https://twitter.com/TheLAOOfficial RELATED SEASON 1 INTERVIEWS Jon Hillis (Cabin): https://youtu.be/4hY7hWkfqYk Zach Anderson (Coordinape): https://youtu.be/Ui-zmGufpHo Songyi Lee (SeoulBound): https://youtu.be/FWnnjTw4cpY This interview took place during ETHDenver 2023: https://www.ethdenver.com DISCLOSURES Matthew is an investor in Tribute Labs and member of FlamingoDAO, Red DAO, Neon DAO, and Noise DAO. Nothing in this video should be construed as financial advice. SOCIAL Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/maearth X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/maearthmedia Lenstube: https://lenstube.xyz/channel/maearth.lens Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maearthmedia/ Mirror: https://mirror.xyz/maearth.eth LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/maearth/ Lenster: https://lenster.xyz/u/maearth Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maearthcommunity TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maearthmedia

Aktienrebell - Eigenständig anlegen & Vermögen aufbauen
#252 Superforecasting: Wie du bessere Prognosen als 98% aller Menschen triffst

Aktienrebell - Eigenständig anlegen & Vermögen aufbauen

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2023 45:29


Superforecaster sind in der Lage, bessere Prognosen als Fachexperten auf ihrem jeweiligen Gebiet und als Geheimdienstler, die Zugriff auf vertrauliche Informationen haben, zu treffen. Die Professoren Philip Tetlock und Dan Gardner haben diese Superforecaster identifiziert und sie auf ihre Erfolgsgeheimnisse getestet. Was haben Barack Obama, Osama bin Laden, deine Wetter-App und die deutsche Wehrmacht damit zu tun? Tatsächlich einiges. Ich teile meine Erkenntnisse aus dem Buch "Superforecasting" mit dir, warum Prognosen trotz berechtigter Skepsis enorm wichtig sind für die Wirtschaft, Aktien und das persönliche Leben und was die Erfolgsfaktoren sind. Viel Spaß! Lerne schrittweise, wie du dein Geld eigenständig erfolgreich anlegst: https://aktienrebell.de/academy/ Hier habe ich mein Depot: https://aktienrebell.de/welches-depot/ Kontakt aufnehmen? Gern per LinkedIn, Instagram, Kontaktformular oder Mail an jannes ät aktienrebell.de. B2B-Kontaktformular: https://aktienrebell.de/b2b/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/aktienrebell/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/Aktienrebell Hochwertige Aktienanalysen & Research: https://strategyinvest.de/ Wenn dir der Podcast bei deiner Geldanlage, dem Investieren, der Börse, Aktien und Co. weiterhilft, würde ich mich sehr freuen, wenn du mir eine positive Bewertung da lässt oder meine Links zur Depoteröffnung nutzt. Danke für deine Unterstützung! Disclaimer: Keine Anlageberatung, nur meine persönliche Meinung. Prüfe jedes Investment vor dem Kauf selbst auf Risiken.

Choiceology with Katy Milkman
The Superforecasters: With Guests Leon Panetta, Peter Bergen & Barbara Mellers

Choiceology with Katy Milkman

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2023 37:48


There are moments in life where it seems as though everything is riding on one important decision. If only we had a crystal ball to see the future, we could make those decisions with greater confidence. Fortune-telling aside, there are actually methods to improve our predictions—and our decisions.In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at what makes some people “superforecasters.” In 2010, the United States government had been looking for Al Qaeda leader and perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, for nearly a decade. Years of intelligence gathering all over the world had come up short. It seemed every new tip was a dead end. But one small group of CIA analysts uncovered a tantalizing clue that led them to a compound in Pakistan. Soon, the president of the United States would be faced with a difficult choice: to approve the top-secret mission or not.We will hear this story from two perspectives. Peter Bergen is a national security commentator and author of the book The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. He interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1997.Former CIA director Leon Panetta led the United States government's hunt for bin Laden and describes the night his mission came to a dramatic conclusion.Next, Katy speaks with Barbara Mellers about research that shows how so-called superforecasters make more accurate predictions despite facing uncertainty and conflicting information. You can read more in the paper titled "Identifying and Cultivating Superforecasters as a Method of Improving Probabilistic Predictions."Barabara Mellers is the I. George Heyman University Professor of both marketing at the Wharton School and of psychology at the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Choiceology is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. For more on the series, visit schwab.com/podcast.If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating or review on Apple Podcasts. Important DisclosuresAll expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice in reaction to shifting market conditions.The comments, views, and opinions expressed in the presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of Charles Schwab.Data contained herein from third-party providers is obtained from what are considered reliable sources. However, its accuracy, completeness or reliability cannot be guaranteed.The policy analysis provided by the Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., does not constitute and should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any political party.All corporate names are for illustrative purposes only and are not a recommendation, offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security.Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.The book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (CS&Co.). Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (CS&Co.) has not reviewed the book and makes no representations about its content.Apple Podcasts and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.Google Podcasts and the Google Podcasts logo are trademarks of Google LLC.Spotify and the Spotify logo are registered trademarks of Spotify AB.(0623-3UG1)

The Fiftyfaces Podcast
Episode 196: Duncan MacInnes of Ruffer: The Art of MiniMax Regret and Portfolio Construction in Today's Markets

The Fiftyfaces Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2023 34:56


Duncan MacInnes is an Investment Director at Ruffer LLP, where he has spent over a decade. He previously worked in wealth management. I have enjoyed listening to Duncan discuss positioning and multi-asset insights on the conference circuit and wanted to take this opportunity to discuss his views on the current macro backdrop as well as the state of play in finance circles as we wrestle with failing banks and what this means for investors. We start our conversation with a run through Duncan's upbringing in Scotland and his initial study of law, his passage into first wealth management and then asset management. His initial training in wealth management took him to Asia and we discuss how that total immersion experience lit the fire for an interest in economics, markets and multi-asset class investing. Moving to his current outlook we discuss Ruffer's preference for "minimax regret" which is the practice of minimizing the probability of your maximum regret - and focusing on capital preservation. We discuss the impact of the Fed tightening cycle on taking money out of the system and what this means for the velocity of money and money concentrating in the centre. We then turn to a number of other areas in turn - de-dollarization, the shifting appeal of fixed income and the coming chronic phase of the crisis. Our discussion around diversity focuses on creating an organization that can speak multiple languages - metaphorically speaking - some the language of number and quantitative analysis, some the language of sales and client partnerships Duncan discusses some of the finance books that he recommends to others and these are: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks and SuperForecasting by Philip Tetlock. Series 3 of the 2023 Fiftyfaces Podcast is supported by Eagle Point Credit Management. Eagle Point Credit Management is a specialist investment manager principally focused on income-oriented credit investments in niche and inefficient markets. Founded by Thomas Majewski in partnership with Stone Point Capital in 2012, Eagle Point currently manages over $7.8 billion in AUM. Investment strategies pursued by the firm include collateralized loan obligations (“CLOs”), portfolio debt securities, and other opportunities across the credit universe. Currently, we believe that Eagle Point is the largest investor in CLO equity in the world and one of the largest non-bank lenders focused on providing financing solutions to credit funds. Learn more about Eagle Point at http://eaglepointcredit.com/

The Fiftyfaces Podcast
Duncan MacInnes of Ruffer: The Art of MiniMax Regret and Portfolio Construction in Today's Markets

The Fiftyfaces Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2023 34:56


Duncan MacInnes is an Investment Director at Ruffer LLP, where he has spent over a decade. He previously worked in wealth management. I have enjoyed listening to Duncan discuss positioning and multi-asset insights on the conference circuit and wanted to take this opportunity to discuss his views on the current macro backdrop as well as the state of play in finance circles as we wrestle with failing banks and what this means for investors. We start our conversation with a run through Duncan's upbringing in Scotland and his initial study of law, his passage into first wealth management and then asset management. His initial training in wealth management took him to Asia and we discuss how that total immersion experience lit the fire for an interest in economics, markets and multi-asset class investing. Moving to his current outlook we discuss Ruffer's preference for "minimax regret" which is the practice of minimizing the probability of your maximum regret - and focusing on capital preservation. We discuss the impact of the Fed tightening cycle on taking money out of the system and what this means for the velocity of money and money concentrating in the centre. We then turn to a number of other areas in turn - de-dollarization, the shifting appeal of fixed income and the coming chronic phase of the crisis. Our discussion around diversity focuses on creating an organization that can speak multiple languages - metaphorically speaking - some the language of number and quantitative analysis, some the language of sales and client partnerships Duncan discusses some of the finance books that he recommends to others and these are: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks and SuperForecasting by Philip Tetlock. Series 3 of the 2023 Fiftyfaces Podcast is supported by Eagle Point Credit Management. Eagle Point Credit Management is a specialist investment manager principally focused on income-oriented credit investments in niche and inefficient markets. Founded by Thomas Majewski in partnership with Stone Point Capital in 2012, Eagle Point currently manages over $7.8 billion in AUM. Investment strategies pursued by the firm include collateralized loan obligations (“CLOs”), portfolio debt securities, and other opportunities across the credit universe. Currently, we believe that Eagle Point is the largest investor in CLO equity in the world and one of the largest non-bank lenders focused on providing financing solutions to credit funds. Learn more about Eagle Point at http://eaglepointcredit.com/

Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast
What I read in April 2023; pre-releases, comedy, and books I didn't finish

Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2023 14:46


It's April, and it's been a funny month of starting books, not finishing books, and desperately trying to squeeze books in so that I did finish them. So here we are; two books read, two books retired, and two books in progress. This month I'm talking about... Books I read

Economics Explained
How to be a Superforecaster w/ Warren Hatch, CEO of Good Judgment - EP176

Economics Explained

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2023 47:44


What are the characteristics of superforecasters? How can a superforecasting team be developed? Hear from Warren Hatch, CEO of Good Judgment, a leading global forecasting business based in NYC. Accurate forecasts from Good Judgment superforecasters have included the scale of the pandemic. In early 2020, Good Judgment superforecasters estimated the United States would have over 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 with 99 percent certainty, an estimate that was considered by many as excessive at the time. Warren gives show host Gene Tunny and his colleague Tim Hughes some valuable tips on how to become a superforecaster. Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. What's covered in EP176The Good Judgment forecasting business [2:41]What are the characteristics of superforecasters? [6:47]How to identify someone who is good at pattern recognition? Raven's matrices [9:24]Link between subject matter expertise and forecasting ability [10:40]What are some of the techniques that are used to help super forecasters rid themselves of prejudice and bias? [12:57]How large does a super forecasting group need to be to be successful? [20:35]Tips for being a super forecaster [25:59]Using the percentages to retrospectively see how you've gone [27:56]Bayes' Theorem [31:41]The importance of being open to a range of different views [42:47]About this episode's guest: Warren Hatch, CEO of Good JudgmentWarren Hatch is Good Judgment's second CEO, succeeding co-founder Terry Murray. Before joining Good Judgment, Hatch was a partner at McAlinden Research, where he identified thematic investment opportunities in global markets for institutional investor clients. Previously, he co-managed a hedge fund seeded by Tiger Management and was a portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley.Hatch holds a doctorate in politics from Oxford, a masters in Russian and international policy studies from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and a bachelors in history from the University of Utah. He is also a CFA® charterholder.Links relevant to the conversationGood Judgment's website and Twitter:https://goodjudgment.com/ and https://twitter.com/superforecaster?lang=enBBC Reel featuring Warren Hatch:https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0dwntct/can-you-learn-to-predict-the-future-Warren's talk on YouTube which Gene quotes from in the episode:What is Superforecasting? - Warren Hatch, Good JudgementArticle by Nicholas Gruen:Making better economic forecastsLinks regarding foxes versus hedgehogs:https://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jan/26/why-foxes-are-better-forecasters-than-hedgehogs/https://goodjudgment.com/the-cost-of-overconfidence/CreditsThanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, and other podcasting platforms.

RNZ: Sunday Morning
David Spiegelhalter: Micromorts and superforecasting

RNZ: Sunday Morning

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2022 28:27


Micromorts - units of risk equating to a one-in-a-million chance of death - can help answer these questions. Mathematician and statistician David Spiegelhalter has done the numbers and shares what he knows about your risk of death.

Investing by the Books
#36 Matt Joass on Superforecasting

Investing by the Books

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2022 61:30


Matt Joass is the Founder and CIO at Maven Funds Management. Matt previously worked as a financial analyst at a large international shipping firm and has co-founded the Copenhagen Investment Club. The focal point for our conversation is the book Superforecasting, and we cover everything from thinking in probabilities to good fiction books. We welcome all suggestions of interesting authors, books, investors, and voracious readers. For more info about the podcast, go to the episode page and follow us on Twitter. This episode was recorded on November 2, 2022.—————————————Episode Chapters(00:00) Intro by Eddie & Niklas (01:10) How Matt got interested in investing(03:51) Superforecasting(07:02) Why are people bad forecasters? (10:04) Improving investing through forecasting (12:35) Critique against forecasting(16:58) The ten commandments (25:04) Maven Fund Management (29:46) A walk-through of a case (34:22) Thinking in probabilities rather than certainties (37:48) Breaking things down into smaller pieces(43:22) Growth mindset vs fixed mindset (46:11) Matt's most common cognitive biases (49:56) System for identifying mistakes (53:37) Book discussions(01:00:17) Final remarks —————————————Books MentionedSuperforecasting - Dan Gardner and Philip TetlockRich Dad Poor Dad - Robert KiyosakiHow Buffett Does It - James Pardoe Snowball - Alice Schroeder A Thousand Brains - Jeff HawkinsThe Talent Code - Daniel Coyle Deep Survival - Laurence GonzalesThe Tao Jones Averages - Bennett W. Goodspeed Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge—————————————Companies MentionedCogstate—————————————More on MattMatt's TwitterMatt's LinkedInMattjoass.com—————————————About the PodcastIntro episode: https://www.redeye.se/podcast/investing-by-the-books/817383/0-intro-to-investing-by-the-books—————————————What is Investing by the Books?Investing by the Books was founded by Henrik Andersson, Bo Börtemark, Mats Larsson and Michael Persson. It has published hundreds of book reviews in the past 10 years and operates on a non-profit basis. Visit the website: http://www.investingbythebooks.com/Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Investbythebook—————————————What is Redeye?Redeye is a research-centered boutique investment bank from Stockholm. Founded in 1999, Redeye cultivates investors through timeless knowledge, a humble attitude, and a strong focus on quality. Visit the website: https://www.redeye.se/Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Redeye_—————————————DisclaimerNotice that the content in this podcast is not, and shall not be construed as investment advice. This information is meant to be informative and for general purposes only. For full disclaimer, visit Redeye.se

Skip the Queue
How to create truly unique visitor attractions, with Robbie Jones

Skip the Queue

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2022 43:08


Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends January 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://www.katapult.co.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrrobbiejones/https://www.katapult.co.uk/creating-unique-visitor-destinations-in-a-crowded-market/ Robbie is Insights Analyst Lead at Katapult. He works on providing data-driven audience and market trends, as well as operational insights, to assist the design team in creating immersive, commercially-successful experiences. Robbie has over 10 years' experience in the leisure and tourism industry and has worked with iconic brands, theme parks, family entertainment centres, museums and visitor attractions around the world. He is a dedicated Board Member of his local art and cinema centre, Derby QUAD. Katapult designs themed attractions and experiences that amaze and engage visitors globally. Our work is enjoyed by 50 million visitors, at 81 attractions, in 18 different countries, every year. As well as increasing guest experience, we thrive on helping you generate more income, more fans and bring the vision for your attraction to life. Legoland, Sea Life, Twycross Zoo, Alton Towers. Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode I speak with industry experts from the attractions world.In today's episode, I speak with Robbie Jones, Insights Analyst Lead at Katapult. We discuss how to create a unique visitor attraction, what you need to know before you start, and what the leisure and attractions market is looking like post-COVID.If you like what you hear, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.We're back, I hope you've all had really busy summers full of lovely visitors. I'd really like to know how it's been for you. So feel free to get in touch. You can always email me at kelly@rubbercheese.com. Can you believe this is season four of Skip the Queue Podcast? I cannot believe that we've been running for so long now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sticking around and for supporting us. We have a whole season full of really brilliant guests booked in, and I know that you're going to absolutely love them. We'll be covering topics on innovation, pricing, filming, and even aromas. Yeah, you heard me right, all the smelly stuff. But we are kicking off in style with the team at Katapult. Kelly Molson: Robbie.Robbie Jones: Hello. Hello.Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue. I'm really excited to have you on today. Thank you for joining me for the first episode of season four.Robbie Jones: I know. What an honour, what an honour. I can't believe that I've been chosen first.Kelly Molson: You're the chosen one. Well, you say it's an honour now, but you might not appreciate it after I've got you with these icebreaker questions.Robbie Jones: All good.Kelly Molson: I've actually got some new ones this season. So I've been asking our lovely former guests and our Twitter followers to send me in some new ones because I felt like the old ones were getting a bit tired. So I'm going to whack you with some of the new ones and see how we get on.Robbie Jones: Okay. Here goes.Kelly Molson: I have to say, this is one of my favourite ones.Robbie Jones: Okay.Kelly Molson: It might date us slightly as well. You can only save one of the Muppets, which one do you choose and why?Robbie Jones: I think Kermit.Kelly Molson: Okay.Robbie Jones: He's just iconic, isn't he? My first memory of Kermit is when they did their version of A Christmas Carol. The thought of Kermit doing that was amazing. So it's got to be Kermit, it's got to be Kermit.Kelly Molson: Yeah, he's a classic. He's a classic, isn't he? He's quite legendary. All right. Good. Okay, good answer. Next one. If you could enter the Olympics for anything, what would you be Olympic level at? And we are not just talking sports here. This could be baking, moaning. What are you saying?Robbie Jones: I think I see myself as a bit of a jack of all, a master of none. Maybe I'm a decathlete, something like that, where I'm good at a few things but I'm not amazing at one big thing.Kelly Molson: When we go back to sports day at school, what was the thing that you would do at sports day?Robbie Jones: It was probably the long distance running. I seem to do a lot of cross country, we used to call it in our school, which went from tarmac to a muddy path in about five minutes. So I don't know how cross country that was. But yeah, long distance running. I can't stand it now. I can't stand the noise of breathing, heavy breathing as I struggle up a hill. That's just not a sound anybody wants to listen to.Kelly Molson: Oh, you really make me laugh. So the only thing I can think about when I'm running is breathing and now all I'm going to hear is myself breathing and think about Robbie and not wanting to do it. Okay, final one.Robbie Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: What movie can you rewatch over and over and over again? And how many times have you watched this movie that you're about to tell me?Robbie Jones: So I think for an absolute nostalgia, it'd have to be Dumb and Dumber because the amount of bonding that me and my younger brother have done over that film is just immense. I think we reference it every time we speak to one another, it's just become part of our psyche, part of our relationship. So we've probably watched it dozens of times between us, but it gets referenced at least three times a week.Kelly Molson: Oh, it's a great film.Robbie Jones: Jim Carrey, brilliant.Kelly Molson: He's great, isn't he? Are you going to do... So if we do the song, Mock-Robbie Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: ... ing-Robbie Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: ... bird.Robbie Jones: I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe I'm doing it.Kelly Molson: This is the level that the show has gotten to, folks. This is what we got up to on our summer break. And I love that film and my friends were really obsessed with Ace Ventura films as well, Jim Carrey.Robbie Jones: Yes.Kelly Molson: Cannot beat.Robbie Jones: Yeah, comedy icon. Amazing. I love him to pieces.Kelly Molson: Robbie, I can't believe I just made you do that. I'm so sorry. I've lost it now. Right. Unpopular opinion. What've you got for us?Robbie Jones: Right. I don't think eating chocolate and fruit should go together. It's not right. I'll draw a line, fruit and nut in terms of a chocolate bar, dried fruits, I'm okay with. But when it's fresh, juicy things like grapes and strawberries going with chocolate, I just can't stand it at all.Kelly Molson: Oh, what? Not a little fondue at a wedding? A little chocolate fondue? No?Robbie Jones: No, just no. You wouldn't mix milk with water and drink it. And that's kind of what I feel like when I'm eating chocolate and fruit together. So yeah, whoever has got the largest fondue rental company, please stop because I don't like it.Kelly Molson: Wow. Okay. I feel like that's quite controversial. The milk and water thing actually turned my stomach. When you said that, I was like, "Oh, no, you wouldn't, would you?"Robbie Jones: There you go. Again, the next time you eat a fondue, just think of me and start gagging probably as I would.Kelly Molson: Wow. What a note to start the podcast on. We've really taken this to a whole new level today, haven't we? Excellent. Right, Robbie, you are the lead insights analyst at Katapult. And I want to come back in a minute to talk about what your job entails, but first Katapult itself. So a little story for you. So years ago, you know when you were at school and you'd have to pick work experience? My granddad had a business and his next door neighbour's business made props for films.Robbie Jones: Nice.Kelly Molson: So I bagged myself work experience at this place and I got to make loads, I just got to make some weird stuff that then ended up in films. And I remember going to the cinema, watching the film going, "I made that Hessian box there. I sewed that. Whoa, that was really good." If I could go back now and go, "No, this is where I want to go and do work experience," I would choose Katapult without a doubt because you do incredible things. Tell the listeners what Katapult does, it's so cool.Robbie Jones: Yeah, sure. So we design themed attractions and experiences. We do it the world over and it could be as something as small as a little popup street food courtyard that we did a couple of years ago right to a large scale, full theme park design and everything in between. And it is, it's great, it's really, really fun. We get to work with some amazing clients, some amazing brands and IPs where the design team are just in their element. They're able to work with brands like LEGO that they've grown up playing with since they was small boys and girls. So it's fantastic for us all to carry on being a kid really, in essence, being creative, being surrounded by colour and fun and entertainment. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of hard work that goes into it. A lot of extended hours, red-eye flights across the world. But it's amazing. It's amazing to be a part of and design some pretty amazing things that are either coming soon or already open. So yeah, we do a lot and we're very thankful.Kelly Molson: It's so exciting. I feel like you played it down a little bit there as well. You were like, "Yeah, we design attractions and experiences." I was like, "Yeah, you do. It's really exciting." What do you do specifically there? Lead insights and analyst is your job title.Robbie Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: So you are kind of the data that sits behind that, the research that sits behind it.Robbie Jones: Yeah, absolutely. So I think something that we've been in the industry for over 20 years now and gradually that we've seen that actually it's really good to make sure you've got some sort of insights, believe it or not, to make a very good decision. And it was something that was kind of lacking within the industry. There was lots of big thinking, feasibility reports, people telling you what the commercial outcomes would be to improve a visitor attraction or even to open a new attraction. But no one was really saying, "Well, hold on a minute, who is it that you're trying to get through the doors and what is it that they actually want? And have they actually got the money to spend that you are charging for?"Robbie Jones: And that's the bit of the insights gap that I, and we at Katapult, fill. We understand the sheer importance of having that insights. We can't just design something from scratch, full stop, regardless of whether we are working with an IP or not. You've got to have an idea of who are the people coming through the door. So that sheer responsibility lays flat on my shoulders to make sure that whatever the design team designs next, it is fully in lined, not just commercially, but from a guest point of view as well that they are going to love it from the moment they walk in. So yeah, pretty big responsibility. But it's fantastic to set the design team up to let them creative minds go wild.Kelly Molson: It is fascinating what you do. And I think that it's really similar to probably the bit that I do in our business, because my role is to understand what the client's challenges is. And so you are asking all of the questions around, "Well, who's your consumer? What do they spend? Where do they do? Where do they go? What do they read?" Et cetera, et cetera. And then you translate. The designers, they get to do the fun bit. But I think that the research bit is the fun bit, to be honest. They would probably argue with me. So how do you start that process? What are the kind of things that you're asking?Robbie Jones: Well, I guess it depends on the client, depends on the project. But the way we typically start for existing visitor attractions is we kind of do a mystery shop, or we call it a guest experience audit. But we don't just go around and have fun, that's the second part of the day. The first part of the day is thinking about if you've got signs telling interpretation and you're a museum, are they at the right height for kids to read it? If it is, is it the right level of language required for a five, six, seven year old to be able to read it? And everything in between. It's is the staff levels good? Are there plenty of vegetarian options within the cafe facilities? All of these things where we want to make sure every touchpoint that every guest that comes through is satisfied and our audit goes in, it pulls out the good stuff, but more importantly for the operators, it pulls out the stuff where they could probably do a little bit better. It's the things that are probably mentioned more than often on TripAdvisor.Robbie Jones: And so it gives us the chance to go, "Right, yes, we did find these issues. These need solving as soon as possible so let's get to work. Let's get to work in figuring out what we can do." And sort of 75% of the time, those things that we highlight, they can pretty much be done by the attraction themselves. It's only the other 25% where we go, "Right, your guests aren't staying for four hours and you want them to stay for four hours. They're only staying for two. What can we do to make the experience last twice as long? What can we do to keep them there and engaged and immersed for double the amount of time that they are before?" And that's obviously when we get the design team's creative juices flowing and start to think about what can we do to improve the attraction. So yeah, in a roundabout way, the guest experience audit helps to unlock the insights, helps to give us the ammunition we need to improve the attraction, and also look to work on some bigger projects for the clients as well. So yeah, that's a roundabout way in terms of how we do it with the audit.Kelly Molson: I love that. So from your perspective, it's not just about creating new, it's not just about adding on. It's about looking at it from a holistic perspective. Where are you already? How are you performing? Okay, well, look, this is doing really well. That's great. These things need to improve. And then, okay, so now let's look at the new stuff. Because I guess there's always that excitement about, "New, new, new, new," isn't there? Oh, a new attraction, a new, I don't know, show that you're going to put on within it. And that's what gets everyone excited. Sometimes they forget to take that step back and go, "But what needs to improve with what we already have?"Robbie Jones: Yeah, absolutely. And the greatest assets that visitor attractions have probably got are sat there already, they just need discovering. And what we tend to find is if it's not something tangible, like a ride needs improving or an experiential walking trail needs improving, it falls down to the narrative or the storytelling of the attraction. That seems to be the thing that we are coming across at the moment, which probably leaves a little bit left to be desired. People don't explain their stories enough. Why are they unique? Why are they telling us this story when you go into a museum? Or why has this art centre got this curation of art? People aren't very good at telling stories that guests want to listen to. So you're right. It's not always about the new, it's about the existing, but extrapolating what's good about that experience in the first place.Kelly Molson: You wrote a really good article that I read a couple of weeks ago called Creating Unique Visitor Destinations in a Crowded Market. So I'm going to put a link to this in the show notes, but it's on Katapult's website as well.Kelly Molson: You said that attractions need to capitalise on what is unique about them. And that's not just from the perspective of, "Hey, we've got this mascot," or, "this is how we're going to put it around the site." Is the location unique? Is the food offering that you have based on that location? What is it about you that really stands out that guests can't get anywhere else and they're not going to get the same story anywhere else? I thought that was such a great way of looking at the uniqueness of each attraction.Robbie Jones: Yeah, and I think there's always going to be a place for attractions that have got the fastest thing, the tallest thing, the biggest thing. That does a lot to pull a crowd. But when it comes to trying to fight your corner, if you're medium or smaller size visitor attraction, you've got to pull on your unique. There's a finite source of money and time so you're going have to try and get your visitors and your guests a slightly different way. The article came from an issue that was within two strands of the industry. The first being museums and art galleries that were struggling from a values perspective to say, "We can't take this donation because it doesn't fit in with our values." Or museums having to give away certain artefacts back to countries because of the connotations of it being stolen in what is in today's society. So they're under huge pressure to say, "Well, what is our story? What is our narrative?" And for places like that, it is very much rooted in the locality. What is your city about? What is your region about? And curating around that.Robbie Jones: The second strand is around experiences that have got a blueprint and are looking to create dozens of the same attraction all around the world. Again, there is absolutely a place for that in this world. We've got countless clients who do the same thing. But where there needs to be a differentiation is how the local market impacts what that attraction is. You can't just say, "We're going to have an indoor attraction that's going to have a soft play and a cafe and that's kind of it. And then we're going to put it throughout 40 different countries around the world." It's not going to wash. You can't just put a badge on the front of that indoor attraction and say, "Welcome to Tokyo. Welcome to Orlando." It's just not going to work. It's not going to wash. It is not unique enough.Robbie Jones: So for those attractions, it's about, "Yes, you've got a blue blueprint, but what can you do differently based on the people, the profile, the guests that are going to come through that door to make it slightly tweaked in terms of things that they might not have from a local competitor point of view?" Or just making sure that you replicate their stories within the attraction. I've seen some really good stuff that Crayola have done in the US where they're starting to onboard local artists for their entertainment centres. That's amazing. You could be in the US, go to the two different Crayolas and have a different experience. So being able to create that unique experience is twofold, but it's one that everyone's got to look at quite a bit now.Kelly Molson: So one of the things I thought was quite interesting is the scale of the projects that you work on at Katapult. So for example, I think you mentioned earlier, the Derby Market Place project, which is a popup marketplace, and then you've worked with organisations like the SEA LIFE London Aquarium. They're really different experiences. Do you look at the same approach when you are working with that kind of scale of client?Robbie Jones: Yeah, absolutely. I think with those two examples, there was a very clear commercial goal for both of them. For SEA LFIE it was about adding an experience that makes the ticket price value for money, but it's also there to increase photographic and merchandise sales as well. So there was a very clear understanding of what the commercial goal was. For Derby Market Place, that was actually a popup courtyard that was set up in 2020 just after the first lockdown of the pandemic in the UK. Derby is our home city and we was approached by the city council to do something that will support the local businesses because there was obviously restaurants, cafes going bust because they simply couldn't do a takeaway service or they didn't have the outdoor catering. So for that, we created a courtyard.Robbie Jones: So as a result, they both had commercial goals and we both started them pretty much the same way, which is, "Right. Well, who is it that's going to come through the door?" Who is it? What do they want? Is it a family of four? Is it a couple? How much money have they got? What sort of experience are they used to? How long are they going to stay? What information are they going to want? All of this information that I guess sometimes we take for granted in the attractions industry, feed it into the design and ultimately come up with exactly what we did for the marketplace and SEA LIFE. So yeah, I think by and large, we kind of stick along the same path, very much insights driven design. We do the insights, we design it based on that, and then we hope it reaches the commercial goal.Kelly Molson: So you mentioned Crayola a minute ago. That is a brilliant example of really using the locality to make that attraction individual. What other great examples of really truly unique attractions can you think of?Robbie Jones: Well, I think I mentioned it in the article you've already mentioned. But Meow Wolf, particularly the first one in Santa Fe, that is an absolute benchmark that I use in terms of how you use local talents, local immersion to help make Santa Fe a destination in it's own right. It's amazing how much one attraction can pivot the way that a region is seen, a city is seen, and turns it into a place that people are staying overnight for two or three nights to just to go to Meow Wolf. So definitely that, in terms of creating a destination.Robbie Jones: But I do want to pull out another example as well, and it's not necessarily unique as such, but it's the feeling is unique, and that is Paultons Park. So for those that have been to Paultons, Peppa Pig World is there, which is a massive pull. They've got some great rides, they've got some really good food and beverage outlets, a good smattering of live performances. But what makes the park stand out is how immaculate it is when it comes to public realm. The gardens are fantastic, the landscaping's amazing. You'd be hard troubled to find a piece of litter on the floor. And the staff are so incredibly attentive with attention to detail that actually, when I've gone a few times now, it's the one thing that always stands out to me. And it's the benchmark for just cleanliness. You could be forgiven for being in a communist China, it's very clean and orderly and focused. But actually when we think about visiting a theme park, we want it to be glossy and clean and not a bother in the world. And it's little things like that, for me, that have made Paultons an absolute benchmark as well for us.Kelly Molson: Because I always think back to Disney about that and no litter, beautiful gardens and that, for me, is the level. I haven't had the pleasure of Paultons Park yet. I think I've got a couple more years and then it'll be on the list.Robbie Jones: Yeah, absolutely. You'll find out just much you can spend in that store with Peppa Pig.Kelly Molson: Oh God. Yeah, I can imagine. Let's talk about summer and let's talk about what the attractions market looks like at the moment. So I know that you've had an incredibly busy summer and as we are recording this, we're still at the tail end of it. So I can imagine that you are looking forward to a little bit of a rest-Robbie Jones: Yes, definitely.Kelly Molson: ... come September-October time. How is the attractions market looking at the moment to you post-COVID? Because we've moved on, so to speak, from COVID or the majority of people have moved on from it, but I think it's really difficult with attractions because we are still seeing a slight decline in visitor numbers, but there's obviously other factors going on at the moment in terms of the energy crisis and things like that. So what's your view of the leisure and attractions market at the moment?Robbie Jones: I think post-COVID, if we think about the start of the year, I think it was incredibly buoyant. I think attractions have seen the opportunity to invest now. The staycation market has absolutely boomed during the times when international travel around the world was banned. So it means that there's been a strong staycation market, which is really, really good. I think for the UK in particular, it's making sure, and this isn't just the attractions industry, I think this goes across the whole staycation market of the UK, don't get so greedy. There's a lot of... I understand that demand is high and you want to capitalise on it. But if we want to keep the UK as a staycation destination, you can't be charging silly prices compared to what they could probably do as an all inclusive for 10 days in Mallorca, as an average in terms of what the family's going to do. You've got to offer some sort of value for money.Robbie Jones: And the cost of living is the big thing now. I think that's what we are seeing. COVID is there in the background and it's obviously affected things, but the cost of living is the one that's really starting to bite a little bit more now. And I think it's because although we saw a lot of drop in wealth during the COVID pandemic, actually the cost of living now is probably a harder time for a lot of people because the savings have already been taken up by making sure they've got income coming in or topping up furlough or whatever it was. So yeah, the cost of living is the big thing. People aren't going to go out and spend, I don't know, 200, 300 quids on a day at a theme park. I can't see it happening. If they do, they'll have to forgo something else and I think that's something that's going to be in the minds-eye of visitor attractions.Robbie Jones: And I think we're starting to see a homogenised view of what we mean by leisure and attractions. Shopping centres now want to get in on the act and have lots of entertainment. You've got places like Butlins and Pontins in the UK, so typical caravan hotel resorts that have built live entertainment and experiences around them. They are in direct competition with theme parks and visitor attractions because they're offering entertainment. So the more experiences are spread throughout our sphere of what we can and can't do, the less money there is to go around. So even more of a need for people to be a little bit more unique and think about it's not just what's going to get me to this theme park, it's why would they choose the theme park over X, Y, and Z. And as they always say, option Z could be sitting at home and watching Netflix. You've you've got to do something to get people off the sofa.Kelly Molson: I'd not considered the option Z could be Butlins or Pontins though. That has just blown my mind because the whole way through the pandemic, we've been saying, "Your competition is Netflix, it's Disney+." But I hadn't even considered that now people are looking at how they spend that excess cash and how they spend their holiday time. Butlins is a competitor for Alton Towers.Robbie Jones: Yeah, in that comparison, absolutely. It's just that they've gone about things in opposite directions. Butlins went from accommodation to experiences and Alton Towers, vice versa, but they are very, very much competitors these days. And if you had £500 as a family to spend for a weekend, where would you go? And actually you look at the offers of both of those examples and depends on what sort of family you are and what sort of things you like to do. It might be a hard decision to make, but ultimately it'll be the one, it won't be the both.Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you said that you have seen attractions investing in new rides and experiences to capitalise on that staycation. What do you think attractions should be doing right now based on what we've just discussed, this competitive state that you are in?Robbie Jones: It sounds really cliche, but I think just have a long term view on things. I can say this from doing insights here at Katapult, but when we are looking at data and trends and audiences, we are not just looking over the last 12 months. We're looking five or 10 years in the past and five and 10 years in the future to get a really good outlook in terms of, "Well, what do we think people are going to do?" Obviously you can't always guess what's going to happen. I think the last few years have taught us that. But you can have some sort of a vision in terms of where you want to go. Where do visitor attractions want to be in 10 years time? I'd love to know how many attractions know that answer.Robbie Jones: If they know it, then that's fantastic because they'll be gradually building towards that. But what we've seen from our side at Katapult is that we've gone to a lot of visitor attractions around the world that are doing a fantastic job at iterating, whether they've got a theme park or museum or whatever it is, but it's all bundled together in a big mound of plasticine with lots of different colours attached and different shapes. And it does a job, but it doesn't feel like the same place. And if we're treating that as the elixir of the visitor attraction, then that you need to get to the point of, "Well, what is your 10 year goal?" If you know that, you know what you're going towards. And I'd certainly focus on that, if you've got a little bit of spare time.Kelly Molson: Yeah, they're not busy at the minute. It's just been through summer. They should be resting now, the summer's done. That's really hard though, isn't it? So an example of that locally, to me, so I live near a vineyard, there's a lovely vineyard, about 15 minute walk from my house called Saffron Grange. Just give them a little plug because it is phenomenal. They've been selling their wines since 2019. However, the vineyards were planted like 11 years before that. And so they have had to have the vision of whatever they were planting and however they were designing that plot of land that they have. It's phenomenal the things they had to think about. What trees they would plant, because that's how high they would grow that would shield those vineyards from the wind and those vineyards from the frost. And just the granular level of planting that's had to go into that place to make the wine and the grapes now to be at the best they possibly can, it blows my mind.Kelly Molson: But it's the same thing at a visitor attraction. You've got to have that vision to go, "Well, this is my idea and this is how we're going to develop it over that time." But you've got the factor of not really knowing what your customers are going to want at that point. With the vineyard, at least they know relatively, other than wind and rain influences and weather that you can't predict, they kind of know how those vines are going to grow and what they're going to get at the end of it. With an attraction, you've got multiple different audiences with multiple different opinions on what they want and what their needs are, throw in a global pandemic. Just how do you even do that? I can't comprehend how you do that.Robbie Jones: I think we get caught up sometimes in thinking that a 10 year vision or a goal, or whatever you want to call it, has to be numerical or it has to be very definitive in terms we want to be the number one theme park in the world. Those sorts of things, you are almost hamstrung by. But what about if you said that you wanted your visitor attraction to be the most inspiring creative place for kids under 10? That is a vision. That is a vision that you can build towards. And if things change, whether it's your audience or your local competitors or whatever it is, you can still build towards that vision because that's what you believe in.Robbie Jones: It's about having a sense of what your values are as a business or as an attraction, standing by them, making that vision a reality by saying, "All right, we're going to do this because we believe in it." And that, again, ties really nicely back into what creates a unique attraction. It's your values. And I think it's the same for every business. We're seeing it a lot more now in the wider business community where people are making a choice over values instead of cost. Although the cost of living is obviously exacerbating that slightly. But people are making choices on green energy instead of fossil fuels, for example. So visitor attractions are only going to go the same way. So it's a big one. Yeah, you're right. 10 years. If you don't know your 10 year vision, then you don't know how to get there over the next 10 years.Kelly Molson: I love that.Robbie Jones: So, it is sorted.Kelly Molson: Yeah, so just put that to the top of the list, attractions. Yeah. Now I guess that's a really good place to be now, isn't it? You've just gone through that really, really hectic summer period. Now, the run up to Christmas, bar a few events and things that'll happen, it's a time for planning for next year. So now is a really good time to be able to take that step back and go, "Okay, well, what is our vision? Do we need to revisit our values and vision?" And then that will make the planning for 2023 a hell of a lot clearer. Okay. One last question on this, because what if attractions are already doing really well at the moment? Because we've got attractions, outdoor attractions that have been smashing it.Robbie Jones: Yeah.Kelly Molson: So what if your attractions are at capacity, what then do you do? So you are looking at things like planning, the expansions, things like that. What can they do?Robbie Jones: I think there's one of two route that are seeming quite popular at the minute. I think one is to, if you look at places like Gravity and Puttshack and a few others that have escaped my mind, by almost franchising, if you think you've got a concept that is completely unique and can be spread throughout the UK, Europe, worldwide, then now's the opportunity to look at it. It needs some careful consideration. As we said before, you can't just copy and paste. But if you think you've got something pretty amazing, then go for it. Well, why not open a second or a third or a fourth? You've proven it can work, so try it. It's worth a go.Robbie Jones: And the second thing, and this is something where I think the bigger museums during the pandemic have really led the chase on this, so I think it was one of the museums in London, I can't remember what, but they introduced lates, Museum Lates where they did silent discos around the exhibits. This is a perfect time to try completely different things. If you've got an out of season or you've got low throughput days or weeks or weekends, then what can you do to bring in another audience? Let's try and fill up your throughput and your dwell time of your attraction 100% of the year round. If you can do that, then you're making more from the asset that's already making your money. So try it out. Find new guest profiles, find new groups of audiences that might want to visit, and consider doing something very special for them. And you never know. If it works out, then you've got an extra revenue stream that you didn't think you had. So they'd be my preference, if I was in that fortunate position, to go down one of those two routes.Kelly Molson: Great advice. Thank you. We're going to put all of Robbie's contact details, et cetera, all in the show notes. So if you fancy a chat with him, you want to find out a little bit more about what Katapult do, you want to book yourselves one of those... Oh God, I've forgotten the words. One of the-Robbie Jones: Audit.Kelly Molson: Audit, audit, audit is the word. If you'd like to book one of those audits. So you can do that. I would love to know about a book though, Robbie. So we always offer up a guest's book choice as a prize and it's can be something that you love, it can be something that's helped shape your career in some way. What do you have for us today?Robbie Jones: Gosh, can I pick two?Kelly Molson: It's double my marketing spend, but why not? What's the first one?Robbie Jones: Oh, good, fantastic. So I think one that's a personal one is by Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises. It's a lovely in depth read about the twenties and thirties where cafe culture was rife and artists and poets were making adventurous trips to France and Spain to soak up the culture. And it's a wonderful, wonderful story that really makes me want to live 90 years from now and really enjoy it. I think that's the first part. The second part is that Ernest Hemingway used to be a journalist so his descriptions of the characters are very matter of fact and I think that's seeped into my audience profiling that I do as part of my job. I like the matter of fact, I like the facts that make the people real, and then start to tell the story of what we think they're going to do in an attraction. So I think Ernest Hemingway has certainly had an influence on me.Robbie Jones: And then the second book is called Superforecasting, which is by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. Now this, it came to prominence a little bit when Dominic Cummins was advisor to Boris Johnson in his ill-fated stay at 10 Downing Street, and it speaks about the art and science of prediction and getting things right. And I read it from end to end. I completely soaked this book up. It's a little bit courty in places so you've got to take a bit of pinch of salt. But it's good at kind of teaching you to say, "Right, can you be a super forecaster?" And funny enough, I think it was February or March this year, they put out a bold statement that Vladimir Putin was not going to enter Ukraine under any circumstances, at least for the next six to nine months and then I think it was about two weeks later and he invaded. So I think that example of the book, it kind of comes with a moral, I think, which is you can super forecast or try and super forecast as much as you want, but you've got absolute no way of deciding what's going to work. There's a difference between a good and a bad decision and a good and a bad outcome. And I think that's what that book's taught me.Kelly Molson: Yeah, that example did not sell that book for me at all. However, that sounds great. That sounds like a really good book. You've absolutely blown my marketing budget again, which everybody always does.Robbie Jones: So sorry.Kelly Molson: No, I love the example of Ernest Hemingway and I love how it's infiltrated the way that you do your work as well. I haven't read either of those books so they're going to go on my list. And actually, listeners, we do compile a list of all of the books that all of our guests suggest and you can find that over on the Rubber Cheese website, rubbercheese.com, go to the insights, it's in there. Robbie, thank you. As ever, if you want to win Robbie's books, if you go over to our Twitter account and you retweet this show announcement with the words, "I want Robbie's books," then you will be in with a chance of winning both of them. I've loved our little chat. Thank you. Thank you for indulging in my little song.Robbie Jones: Oh gosh. I'm just glad that you didn't get me to do the scene where he's peeing into a bottle in Dumb and Dumber. Very well.Kelly Molson: I don't think that would've worked very well on the podcast. Do you?Robbie Jones: No, no. I'm sure you can add some trickle sounds in.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Robbie Jones: If you wanted to.Kelly Molson: Let's end there, shall we? It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Robbie.Robbie Jones: Thank you so much.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.

The Nonlinear Library
EA - Dan Luu: Futurist prediction methods and accuracy by Linch

The Nonlinear Library

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2022 7:04


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Dan Luu: Futurist prediction methods and accuracy, published by Linch on September 15, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. tl;dr: Dan Luu has a detailed post where he tracks in detail past predictions and argues that contra Karnofsky, Arb, etc, the track record of futurists is overall quite bad. Relevantly to this audience, he further argues that this is evidence against the validity of current longtermist efforts in long-range predictions. (I have not finished reading the post). I've been reading a lot of predictions from people who are looking to understand what problems humanity will face 10-50 years out (and sometimes longer) in order to work in areas that will be instrumental for the future and wondering how accurate these predictions of the future are. The timeframe of predictions that are so far out means that only a tiny fraction of people making those kinds of predictions today have a track record so, if we want to evaluate which predictions are plausible, we need to look at something other than track record. The idea behind the approach of this post was to look at predictions from an independently chosen set of predictors (Wikipedia's list of well-known futurists1) whose predictions are old enough to evaluate in order to understand which prediction techniques worked and which ones didn't work, allowing us to then (mostly in a future post) evaluate the plausibility of predictions that use similar methodologies. Unfortunately, every single predictor from the independently chosen set had a poor record and, on spot checking some predictions from other futurists, it appears that futurists often have a fairly poor track record of predictions so, in order to contrast techniques that worked with techniques that I didn't, I sourced predictors that have a decent track record from my memory, an non-independent source which introduces quite a few potential biases. Something that gives me more confidence than I'd otherwise have is that I avoided reading independent evaluations of prediction methodologies until after I did the evaluations for this post and wrote 98% of the post and, on reading other people's evaluations, I found that I generally agreed with Tetlock's "Superforecasting" on what worked and what didn't work despite using a wildly different data set. In particular, people who were into "big ideas" who use a few big hammers on every prediction combined with a cocktail party idea level of understanding of the particular subject to explain why a prediction about the subject would fall to the big hammer generally fared poorly, whether or not their favored big ideas were correct. Some examples of "big ideas" would be "environmental doomsday is coming and hyperconservation will pervade everything", "economic growth will create near-infinite wealth (soon)", "Moore's law is supremely important", "quantum mechanics is supremely important", etc. Another common trait of poor predictors is lack of anything resembling serious evaluation of past predictive errors, making improving their intuition or methods impossible (unless they do so in secret). Instead, poor predictors often pick a few predictions that were accurate or at least vaguely sounded similar to an accurate prediction and use those to sell their next generation of predictions to others. By contrast, people who had (relatively) accurate predictions had a deep understanding of the problem and also tended to have a record of learning lessons from past predictive errors. Due to the differences in the data sets between this post and Tetlock's work, the details are quite different here. The predictors that I found to be relatively accurate had deep domain knowledge and, implicitly, had access to a huge amount of information that they filtered effectively in order to make good predictions. Tetlock was studying peo...

CSPI Podcast
43: Mana from Heaven | Stephen Grugett, James Grugett, & Richard Hanania

CSPI Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 15, 2022 33:57


Stephen and James Grugett are programmers, entrepreneurs, and cofounders of the website Manifold Markets, which hosts user-created prediction markets. They join the podcast to discuss the Salem Center/CSPI Forecasting Tournament on Manifold Markets, which launched last week. The Grugetts and Richard talk about the origins of Manifold Markets, what differentiates it from other prediction market sites, how academics have used the platform to bet on which studies replicate, and the potential for conditional markets to inform public policy debates. They end by brainstorming ideas to increase the value and prestige of Mana (M$), the platform’s currency.Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.Links:Manifold MarketsCSPI/Salem Tournament on Manifold Markets Richard Hanania, “Introducing the Salem/CSPI Forecasting Tournament”Richard Hanania, “Salem Tournament, 5 Days in” The Economist, “How Spooks are Turning to Superforecasting in the Cosmic Bazaar”Research.BetThe Replication ProjectManifold Markets Statistics Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

پادکست فارسی بی‌پلاس ‌Bplus
80: Superforecasting (هنر پیش‌بینی)

پادکست فارسی بی‌پلاس ‌Bplus

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2022 76:24


نویسنده‌: فیلیپ تتلاک | دن گاردنر  متن: عباس سیدین | روایت: علی بندری  تدوین: محسن علی‌شیری موسیقی تیتراژ : پیمان عرب‌زاده  موسیقی متن: youtube audio library خرید مرچندایز بی‌پلاس وبلاگ بی‌پلاس یوتیوب بی‌پلاس        کتاب‌های بی‌پلاس را از اینجا  بخرید.        پشتیبانی از بی‌پلاس با تشکر از اسپانسرهای این اپیزود:  فیدیبو اینستاگرام تاپ عضویت در خبرنامه‌ی بی‌پلاس

Yours Productly
Sameer Singh: LESSONS FROM EARLY- STAGE INVESTING in NETWORK EFFECTS STARTUPS

Yours Productly

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2022 93:24


Startup advisor and early-stage investor focused on network effects. "Creator" of Breadcrumb.vc and Applied Network Effects (one of the highest rated courses on Maven) — both are globally renowned resources to learn about network effects. I'm also part of the Atomico Angel Program, where I invest in early-stage startups with network effects. Please direct all pitches and consulting/speaking requests to sameer@breadcrumb.vc. 14 years of experience in the technology ecosystem — distributed between technology startups and investing. For much of this time, I studied technology business models and network effects in a professional capacity and via independent projects. Previously, spent 5 years at App Annie, a Sequoia-funded, late-stage startup during its hypergrowth phase. There, I led a global, cross-functional team, working across product, marketing, and sales. Advised leading tech companies like Spotify, Shpock and Trainline. Before that, I was an early-stage investor focused on commerce businesses. I have been quoted or mentioned in leading publications, including Reuters, Sifted, Business Insider, The Guardian, Sifted, and Techcrunch. My prior independent work has also been referenced in Philip Tetlock's book, Superforecasting.

The Data Scientist Show
Becoming a superforecaster, decision science for better human predictions - Pavel Atanasov-the data scientist show#036

The Data Scientist Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2022 111:29


(Highlights below)Pavel is a decision scientist and co-founder at Pytho, using decision science to measure and improve human judgment & prediction. He has a phd in psychology and decision science from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on crowd predictions. Pavel's twitter: https://twitter.com/PavelDAtanasov. Follow Daliana (https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu) for more updates on data science and this podcast. Highlights: (00:01:10) how he got into decision science (00:14:38) what makes someone a super forecaster (00:16:20) three elements of becoming a super forecaster (00:24:37) how to effectively update our opinions 00:30:05 how he designed experiments to find out what was a better system (00:48:27) why humans sometimes are better than algorithm (01:14:50) how to collect data and information better (01:33:25) why you should quit (01:42:30) the future of decision science Superforecasting book, based on the Good Judgment Project: https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-Philip-Tetlock/dp/0804136718 Blogs about forecasting: Vox's Future Perfect series: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect Astral Codex Ten: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/

The Futurists
Super Forecasting

The Futurists

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2022 52:12


In episode #4 of The Futurists, Regina Joseph talks us through the mechanics of the methodology known as Superforecasting. From her work with Pytho, Sibylink, the National Science Foundation, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) and beyond, we learn how forecasting extends well into the future through human collective intelligence techniques and statistical analysis. What does it take to see the trends of the future emerging as the world seems chaotic, disruptive and unpredictable?

The Nonlinear Library
EA - Tips for conducting worldview investigations by lukeprog

The Nonlinear Library

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2022 4:15


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Tips for conducting worldview investigations, published by lukeprog on April 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I think AI x-risk reduction is largely bottlenecked on a lack of strategic clarity,[1] more than e.g. bio x-risk reduction is, such that it's very hard to tell which intermediate goals we could aim for that would reduce rather than increase AI x-risk. Even just among (say) EA-motivated longtermists focused on AI x-risk reduction, there is a very wide spread of views on on AI timelines, takeoff speeds, alignment difficulty, theories of victory, sources of doom, and basically everything else (example), and I think this reflects how genuinely confusing the strategic situation is. One important way[2] to improve strategic clarity is via what we've come to call AI "worldview investigations,"[3] i.e. reports that: Aim to provide an initial tentative all-things-considered best-guess quantitative[4] answer to a big, important, fundamental ("worldview") AI strategy question such as "When will we likely build TAI/AGI?" or "How hard should we expect AI alignment to be?" or "What will AI takeoff look like?" or "Which AI theories of victory are most desirable and feasible?" Or, focus on a consideration that should provide a noticeable update on some such question. Are relatively thorough in how they approach the question. Past example "worldview investigations" include: Open Phil's series on "When will we likely build TAI?", summarized here, and comprised mainly by Bio Anchors, Brain Computation, Semi-Informative Priors, Explosive Growth, and Human Trajectory. (~1185pp[5]) Carlsmith's Is power-seeking AI an existential risk? (~90pp) My 2017 Report on Consciousness and Moral Patienthood[6] (~485pp) Worldview investigations are difficult to do well: they tend to be large in scope, open-ended, "wicked," and require modeling and drawing conclusions about many different phenomena with very little hard evidence to work with. Here is some advice that may help researchers to succeed at completing a worldview investigation: Be bold! Attack the big important action-relevant question directly, and try to come to a bottom-line quantitative answer, even though it's unjustified in many ways and will be revised later. Reach out to others early for advice and feedback, especially people who have succeeded at this kind of work before. Share early, scrappy drafts for feedback on substance and direction.[7] On the research process itself, see Minimal-trust investigations, Learning by writing, The wicked problem experience, and Useful Vices for Wicked Problems. Reasoning transparency has advice for how to communicate what you know, with what confidence, and how you know it, despite the fact that for many sub-questions you won't have enough time or evidence to come to a well-justified conclusion. How to Measure Anything is full of strategies for quantifying very uncertain quantities. (Summary here.) Superforecasting has good advice about how to quantify your expectations about the future. (Summary here.) Finally, here are some key traits of people who might succeed at this work:[8] Ability to carve up poorly-scoped big-picture questions into the most important parts, operationalize concepts that seem predictive, and turn a fuzzy mess of lots of factors into a series of structured arguments connected to (usually necessarily weak / of limited relevance) evidence. At least moderate quantitative/technical chops, enough to relatively quickly learn topics like the basics of machine learning scaling laws or endogenous growth theory, while of course still significantly relying on conversations with subject matter experts. Ability to work quickly and iteratively, limiting their time on polish/completeness and on "rabbit holes" that could be better-explored or better-argued or more evidence-ba...

The Electric Wire
The Future of Utilities with Rebecca Ryan and Lauren Azar

The Electric Wire

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 16, 2022 46:58


Rebecca Ryan and Lauren Azar join the Electric Wire for a conversation about change in the energy industry and in our world. Rebecca, one of the nation's leading futurists, discusses local and global trends that everyone should be preparing for. Lauren, one of America's most respected utility attorneys, leads the conversation about change in the energy industry, as they answer the following questions, and more: · How do we get those in the utility industry to start thinking like futurists? · How important are governmental or industry goals to get where we want to go? · What does the future look like for EV's and electrification? · What are the craziest changes coming by 2050 that we haven't thought of yet? Cari Anne Renlund, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Madison Gas and Electric Co., joins Kristin Gilkes, Executive Director of the Customers First! Coalition, as co-host (and bonus guest) for a lively and inspiring conversation about the direction of the industry. Links from the Episode: More on MGE's 2030 and 2050 Carbon Reduction Goals: https://www.mge2050.com/en/ IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/ Note from Rebecca: The Good Judgment Project (https://www.gjopen.com) makes predictions on EV penetration and MANY other things. The Good Judgment Project was founded by the author of Superforecasting, Phil Tetlock who found that regular people can learn to do foresight as well or better than trained CIA agents. Long Bets is also does long term wagering about the future, fueled by a bunch of futurists and thought leaders. I just dropped on and Steven Pinker has a challenge about Bioterrorism. How to Become a Cyborg from MIT Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/06/19/142228/here-are-some-ways-to-upgrade-yourself-one-body-part-at-a-time/

Kapital
K20. Victoriano Izquierdo. Chief data officer

Kapital

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2022 142:33


El big data es uno de esos conceptos pervertidos como las smart cities, la RSC y los hilos de Twitter. Los ‘empresarios' del IBEX mencionan el término en presentaciones vacías y los consultores repiten la idea en busca de fondos europeos. Todos hablan de big data pero nadie sabe lo que está diciendo. Y lo único que en realidad tienen es una triste macro en Excel. Victoriano, cofundador de Graphext, habla bien de los datos porque se gana la vida en ellos. Tratándolos con rigor para tomar mejores decisiones.Escucha el podcast en tu plataforma habitual:Spotify — Apple — iVoox — YouTubeArtículos sobre finanzas en formato blog:Substack Kapital — Substack CardinalApuntes:La señal y el ruido. Nate Silver.Superforecasting. Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner.La mente de los justos. Jonathan Haidt.Cómo ganar amigos e influir sobre las personas. Dale Carnegie.Los peligros de la moralidad. Pablo Malo.Range. David Epstein.Before you make that big decision. Daniel Kahneman & Dan Lovallo & Olivier Sibony.Freakonomics. Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner.Superfreakonomics. Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner.Índice:0.28. Mapear los apuntes o seguir el método de Montaigne.10.34. El motto de Google con los datos: Don't be evil.20.10. Agradecimiento a los trolls de Twitter.31.45. ¿Qué es el big data?53.47. Los estereotipos buenos y los estereotipos malos.1.07.36. El albañil ofrece mejor conversación que el MBA.1.19.43. La icónica fotografía del devoto en la Semana Santa.1.33.53. Las predicciones fallidas de Nate Silver.1.44.11. Freakonomics y la curiosidad del niño.2.04.00. El algoritmo contra Rafa Nadal.2.10.32. ¿Qué debería estudiar para trabajar con datos?

21st Century Entrepreneurship
Warren Hatch: The Incredible Story Behind Superforecasting

21st Century Entrepreneurship

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2022 36:58


Listen to Warren Hatch, the CEO of New York-based Good Judgment Inc., which specializes on superforecasting, in the most recent episode of 21st Century Entrepreneurship. In 2011, the US intelligence community's equivalent to DARPA - IARPA - launched a competition to find cutting-edge methods for forecasting geopolitical events. Four years and over 1 million forecasts later – with Philip Tetlock and Barbara Mellers at the University of Pennsylvania leading – GJP emerged as the winner and outperformed intelligence analysts. Good Judgment Inc is now commercializing this winning approach to harness research by the crowd, and their clients benefit from that externally-validated forecasting methodology.

This Week in FCPA
Episode 286 – the Georgia Finally Beats Alabama

This Week in FCPA

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2022 43:48


The college football season has ended with UGA finally defeating UA. Tom and Jay turn their full attention to the NFL playoffs now and also look at some of the week's top compliance and ethics stories this week in the Georgia Finally Beats Alabama edition. Stories 1.     Carnival and Princess Cruise Lines violated DPA yet again. Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance. DOJ Press Release.  2.     Prioritizing items from the Strategy on Countering Corruption. Worth McMurray in the FCPA Blog. 3.     DOJ to look at short sellers. Jaclyn Jaeger in Compliance Week (sub req'd). 4.     Proposed framework for CCO liability analysis. Mengqi Sun in WSJ Risk & Compliance Journal.    5.     Manipulation on timing of FCPA enforcement action? Matthew Stephenson debunks a new article in GAB. 6.     ComTech comes to financial institution compliance. Christian Wunderly in the FCPA Blog.   7.     Phil Tetlock and Superforecasting come to risk management. Jim DeLoach in CCI. 8.     Ethics and FCPA predictions for 2022. Mike Volkov with a double dose of Carnac the Magnificent. Ethics here. FCPA here.  9.     Banks develop climate risk consortium. Aaron Nicodemus in Compliance Week. (sub req'd) 10.  Liability of local representatives under GDPR. Kelly Hagedorn and Matthew Worby in Compliance and Enforcement.  Podcasts  11.  Tom and Matt Kelly conclude a 2-part podcast series on issues they are following in 2022.  On Compliance into the Weeds, Part 1 and Part 2.  12.  In January on The Compliance Life, I visit with Valerie Charles, partner at StoneTurn. Val has one of the most interesting journeys in compliance. In Part 1, she discussed her academic background and early professional career. In Part 2, she discusses her move to ComTech. 13.  The Compliance Podcast Network welcomes Professor Karen Woody and her new podcast, Classroom Insider. In this most unique pod, Karen interviews some of her student to tell the history of insider trading. In Episode 4, Colin Manchester discusses the evolution of the disclose or abstain rule.  14.  Mikhail Reider-Gordon returns in Lies, Spies & Corporate Crimes: The Wirecard Saga, with Season 2, Episode 3 Shell Games. 15.  Check out 31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program returns, which runs for the month of January, from January 1 to January 31. Available on the Compliance Podcast Network, Megaphone, iTunes, and all other top podcast platforms.  Tom Fox is the Voice of Compliance and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We Are Not Saved
Eschatologist #12 Predictions

We Are Not Saved

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2021 5:57


It's that time of year when people make predictions. I also make predictions though I do them somewhat differently. Mostly I'm interested in Identifying potential catastrophes and dismissing potential salvation. For example, nukes will get used again, and a benevolent AI won't save us.  The key thing is not to make accurate predictions, but to make useful predictions. And as it turns out there's a big difference between the two.

This Week in Intelligent Investing
Superforecasting and the Good Judgment Open | Biggest Lessons of the Year 2021

This Week in Intelligent Investing

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2021 53:32


In this episode, co-hosts Phil Ordway, Elliot Turner, and John Mihaljevic discuss (i) superforecasting and the Good Judgment Open; and (ii) the biggest lessons of the year 2021. Enjoy the conversation!   The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. The views, information, or opinions expressed by hosts or guests are their own. Neither this show, nor any of its content should be construed as investment advice or as a recommendation to buy or sell any particular security. Security specific information shared on this podcast should not be relied upon as a basis for your own investment decisions -- be sure to do your own research. The podcast hosts and participants may have a position in the securities mentioned, personally, through sub accounts and/or through separate funds and may change their holdings at any time.   About the Co-Hosts: Elliot Turner is a co-founder and Managing Partner, CIO at RGA Investment Advisors, LLC. RGA Investment Advisors runs a long-term, low turnover, growth at a reasonable price investment strategy seeking out global opportunities. Elliot focuses on discovering and analyzing long-term, high quality investment opportunities and strategic portfolio management. Prior to joining RGA, Elliot managed portfolios at at AustinWeston Asset Management LLC, Chimera Securities and T3 Capital. Elliot holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation as well as a Juris Doctor from Brooklyn Law School.. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University where he double majored in Political Science and Philosophy. Philip Ordway is Managing Principal and Portfolio Manager of Anabatic Fund, L.P. Previously, Philip was a partner at Chicago Fundamental Investment Partners (CFIP). At CFIP, which he joined in 2007, Philip was responsible for investments across the capital structure in various industries. Prior to joining CFIP, Philip was an analyst in structured corporate finance with Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. from 2002 to 2005. Philip earned his B.S. in Education & Social Policy and Economics from Northwestern University in 2002 and his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2007, where he now serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Finance Department. John Mihaljevic leads MOI Global and serves as managing editor of The Manual of Ideas. He managed a private partnership, Mihaljevic Partners LP, from 2005-2016. John is a winner of the Value Investors Club's prize for best investment idea. He is a trained capital allocator, having studied under Yale University Chief Investment Officer David Swensen and served as Research Assistant to Nobel Laureate James Tobin. John holds a BA in Economics, summa cum laude, from Yale and is a CFA charterholder.

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong Top Posts
Taboo "Outside View" by Daniel Kokotajlo

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2021 11:57


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Taboo "Outside View", published by Daniel Kokotajlo on LessWrong. No one has ever seen an AGI takeoff, so any attempt to understand it must use these outside view considerations. [Redacted for privacy] What? That's exactly backwards. If we had lots of experience with past AGI takeoffs, using the outside view to predict the next one would be a lot more effective. My reaction Two years ago I wrote a deep-dive summary of Superforecasting and the associated scientific literature. I learned about the “Outside view” / “Inside view” distinction, and the evidence supporting it. At the time I was excited about the concept and wrote: “...I think we should do our best to imitate these best-practices, and that means using the outside view far more than we would naturally be inclined.” Now that I have more experience, I think the concept is doing more harm than good in our community. The term is easily abused and its meaning has expanded too much. I recommend we permanently taboo “Outside view,” i.e. stop using the word and use more precise, less confused concepts instead. This post explains why. What does “Outside view” mean now? Over the past two years I've noticed people (including myself!) do lots of different things in the name of the Outside View. I've compiled the following lists based on fuzzy memory of hundreds of conversations with dozens of people: Big List O' Things People Describe As Outside View: Reference class forecasting, the practice of computing a probability of an event by looking at the frequency with which similar events occurred in similar situations. Also called comparison class forecasting. [EDIT: Eliezer rightly points out that sometimes reasoning by analogy is undeservedly called reference class forecasting; reference classes are supposed to be held to a much higher standard, in which your sample size is larger and the analogy is especially tight.] Trend extrapolation, e.g. “AGI implies insane GWP growth; let's forecast AGI timelines by extrapolating GWP trends.” Foxy aggregation, the practice of using multiple methods to compute an answer and then making your final forecast be some intuition-weighted average of those methods. Bias correction, in others or in oneself, e.g. “There's a selection effect in our community for people who think AI is a big deal, and one reason to think AI is a big deal is if you have short timelines, so I'm going to bump my timelines estimate longer to correct for this.” Deference to wisdom of the many, e.g. expert surveys, or appeals to the efficient market hypothesis, or to conventional wisdom in some fairly large group of people such as the EA community or Western academia. Anti-weirdness heuristic, e.g. “How sure are we about all this AI stuff? It's pretty wild, it sounds like science fiction or doomsday cult material.” Priors, e.g. “This sort of thing seems like a really rare, surprising sort of event; I guess I'm saying the prior is low / the outside view says it's unlikely.” Note that I've heard this said even in cases where the prior is not generated by a reference class, but rather from raw intuition. Ajeya's timelines model (transcript of interview, link to model) . and probably many more I don't remember Big List O' Things People Describe As Inside View: Having a gears-level model, e.g. “Language data contains enough structure to learn human-level general intelligence with the right architecture and training setup; GPT-3 + recent theory papers indicate that this should be possible with X more data and compute.” Having any model at all, e.g. “I model AI progress as a function of compute and clock time, with the probability distribution over how much compute is needed shifting 2 OOMs lower each decade.” Deference to wisdom of the few, e.g. “the people I trust most on this matter seem to think.” Intuition-based-on-deta...

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts
Taboo "Outside View" by kokotajlod

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2021 12:00


welcome to the nonlinear library, where we use text-to-speech software to convert the best writing from the rationalist and ea communities into audio. this is: Taboo "Outside View", published by kokotajlod on the effective altruism forum. No one has ever seen an AGI takeoff, so any attempt to understand it must use these outside view considerations. [Redacted for privacy] What? That's exactly backwards. If we had lots of experience with past AGI takeoffs, using the outside view to predict the next one would be a lot more effective. My reaction Two years ago I wrote a deep-dive summary of Superforecasting and the associated scientific literature. I learned about the “Outside view” / “Inside view” distinction, and the evidence supporting it. At the time I was excited about the concept and wrote: “...I think we should do our best to imitate these best-practices, and that means using the outside view far more than we would naturally be inclined.” Now that I have more experience, I think the concept is doing more harm than good in our community. The term is easily abused and its meaning has expanded too much. I recommend we permanently taboo “Outside view,” i.e. stop using the word and use more precise, less confused concepts instead. This post explains why. What does “Outside view” mean now? Over the past two years I've noticed people (including myself!) do lots of different things in the name of the Outside View. I've compiled the following lists based on fuzzy memory of hundreds of conversations with dozens of people: Big List O' Things People Describe As Outside View: Reference class forecasting, the practice of computing a probability of an event by looking at the frequency with which similar events occurred in similar situations. Also called comparison class forecasting. [EDIT: Eliezer rightly points out that sometimes reasoning by analogy is undeservedly called reference class forecasting; reference classes are supposed to be held to a much higher standard, in which your sample size is larger and the analogy is especially tight.] Trend extrapolation, e.g. “AGI implies insane GWP growth; let's forecast AGI timelines by extrapolating GWP trends.” Foxy aggregation, the practice of using multiple methods to compute an answer and then making your final forecast be some intuition-weighted average of those methods. Bias correction, in others or in oneself, e.g. “There's a selection effect in our community for people who think AI is a big deal, and one reason to think AI is a big deal is if you have short timelines, so I'm going to bump my timelines estimate longer to correct for this.” Deference to wisdom of the many, e.g. expert surveys, or appeals to the efficient market hypothesis, or to conventional wisdom in some fairly large group of people such as the EA community or Western academia. Anti-weirdness heuristic, e.g. “How sure are we about all this AI stuff? It's pretty wild, it sounds like science fiction or doomsday cult material.” Priors, e.g. “This sort of thing seems like a really rare, surprising sort of event; I guess I'm saying the prior is low / the outside view says it's unlikely.” Note that I've heard this said even in cases where the prior is not generated by a reference class, but rather from raw intuition. Ajeya's timelines model (transcript of interview, link to model) . and probably many more I don't remember Big List O' Things People Describe As Inside View: Having a gears-level model, e.g. “Language data contains enough structure to learn human-level general intelligence with the right architecture and training setup; GPT-3 + recent theory papers indicate that this should be possible with X more data and compute.” Having any model at all, e.g. “I model AI progress as a function of compute and clock time, with the probability distribution over how much compute is needed shifting 2 OOMs lower each decade.” Deference to wisdom of the few, e.g. “the people I trust most on this matter seem to think.” Intuition-...

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts
Donor Lottery Debrief by TimothyTelleenLawton

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2021 8:27


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Donor Lottery Debrief, published by TimothyTelleenLawton on the Effective Altruism Forum. Write a Review Good news, I've finally allocated the rest of the donor lottery funds from the 2016-2017 Donor Lottery (the first one in our community)! It took over 3 years but I'm excited about the two projects I funded. It probably goes without saying, but this post is about an independent project and does not represent CFAR (where I work). This post contains several updates related to the donor lottery: My first donation: $25k to The Czech Association for Effective Altruism (CZEA) in 2017 My second (and final) donation: $23.5k to Epidemic Forecasting (EpiFor) in 2020 Looking back on the Donor Lottery Call for more projects like these to fund CZEA My previous comments on the original donor lottery post share the basics of how the first $25k was used for CZEA (this was $5k more than I was originally planning to donate due to transfer efficiency considerations). Looking back now, I believe that donation likely had a strong impact on EA community building. My donation was the largest that CZEA had received (I think they previously had received one other large donation—about half the size) and it was enough for CZEA to transition from a purely volunteer organization into a partially-professional organization (1 FTE, plus volunteers). Based on conversations with Jan Kulveit, I believe it would have taken at least 8 more months for CZEA to professionalize otherwise. I believe that in the time they bought with the donation, they were able to more easily secure substantial funding from CEA and other funders, as well as scale up several compelling initiatives: co-organizing Human-aligned AI Summer School, AI Safety Research Program, and a Community Building Retreat (with CEA). I also have been glad to see a handful of people get involved with EA and Rationality through CZEA, and I think the movement is stronger with them. To pick an example familiar to me, several CZEA leaders were recently part of CFAR's Instructor Training Program: Daniel Hynk (Co-founder of CZEA), Jan Kulveit (Senior Research Scholar at FHI), Tomáš Gavenčiak (Independent Researcher who has been funded by EA Grants), and Irena Kotíková (President of CZEA). For more detail on CZEA's early history and the impact of the donor lottery funds (and other influences), see this detailed account. EpiFor In late April 2020, I heard about Epidemic Forecasting—a project launched by people in the EA/Rationality community to inform decision makers by combining epidemic modeling with forecasting. I learned of the funding opportunity through my colleague and friend, Elizabeth Garrett. The pitch was immediately compelling to me as a 5-figure donor: A group of people I already believed to be impressive and trustworthy were launching a project to use forecasting to help powerful people make better decisions about the pandemic. Even though it seemed likely that nothing would come of it, it seemed like an excellent gamble to make, based on the following possible outcomes: Prevent illness, death, and economic damage by helping governments and other decision makers handle the pandemic better, especially governments that couldn't otherwise afford high-quality forecasting services Highlight the power of—and test novel applications of—an underutilized tool: forecasting (see the book Superforecasting for background on this) Test and demonstrate the opportunity for individuals and institutions to do more good for important causes by thinking carefully (Rationality/EA) rather than relying on standard experts and authorities alone Engage members of our community in an effort to change the world for the better, in a way that will give them some quick feedback—thus leading to deeper/faster learning Cross-pollinate our community with professional fie...

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts
A ranked list of all EA-relevant (audio)books I've read by MichaelA

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 15:41


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A ranked list of all EA-relevant (audio)books I've read , published by MichaelA on the AI Alignment Forum. Or: "50+ EA-relevant books your doctor doesn't want you to know about" This post lists all the EA-relevant books I've read since learning about EA,[1] in roughly descending order of how useful I perceive/remember them being to me. (In reality, I mostly listened to these as audiobooks, but I'll say "books I've read" for simplicity.) I also include links to where you can get each book, as well as remarks and links to reviews/summaries/notes on some books. This is not quite a post of book recommendations, because: These rankings are of course only weak evidence of how useful you'll find these books[2] I list all EA-relevant books I've read, including those that I didn't find very useful Let me know if you want more info on why I found something useful or not so useful. I'd welcome comments which point to reviews/summaries/notes of these books, provide commenters' own thoughts on these books, or share other book recommendations/anti-recommendations. I'd also welcome people making their own posts along the lines of this one. (Edit: I think that recommendations that aren't commonly mentioned in EA are particularly valuable, holding general usefulness and EA-relevance constant. Same goes for recommendations of books by non-male, non-white, and/or non-WEIRD authors. See this comment thread.) I'll continue to update this post as I finish more EA-relevant books. My thanks to Aaron Gertler for sort-of prompting me to make this list, and then later suggesting I change it from a shortform to a top-level post. The list Or: "Michael admits to finding a Harry Potter fan fiction more useful than ~15 books that were written by professors, are considered classics, or both" The Precipice, by Ord, 2020 See here for a list of things I've written that summarise, comment on, or take inspiration from parts of The Precipice. I recommend reading the ebook or physical book rather than audiobook, because the footnotes contain a lot of good content and aren't included in the audiobook The book Superintelligence may have influenced me more, but that's just due to the fact that I read it very soon after getting into EA, whereas I read The Precipice after already learning a lot. I'd now recommend The Precipice first. See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books, and here for some thoughts on this and other authoritarianism-related books. Superforecasting, by Tetlock & Gardner, 2015 How to Measure Anything, by Hubbard, 2011 Rationality: From AI to Zombies, by Yudkowsky, 2006-2009 I.e., “the sequences” Superintelligence, by Bostrom, 2014 Maybe this would've been a little further down the list if I'd already read The Precipice Expert Political Judgement, by Tetlock, 2005 I read this after having already read Superforecasting, yet still found it very useful Normative Uncertainty, by MacAskill, 2014 This is actually a thesis, rather than a book I assume it's now a better idea to read MacAskill, Bykvist, and Ord's book on the same subject, which is available as a free PDF Though I haven't read the book version myself Secret of Our Success, by Henrich, 2015 See also this interesting Slate Star Codex review The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Henrich, 2020 See also the Wikipedia page on the book, this review on LessWrong, and my notes on the book. I rank Secret of Our Success as more useful to me, but that may be partly because I read it first; if I only read either this book or Secret of Our Success, I'm not sure which I'd find more useful. See here for some thoughts on this and other authoritarianism-related books. The Strategy of Conflict, by Schelling, 1960 See here for my notes on this book, and h...

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts
Some learnings I had from forecasting in 2020 by Linch

The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2021 4:45


Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Some learnings I had from forecasting in 2020, published by Linch on the AI Alignment Forum. crossposted from my own short-form Here are some things I've learned from spending a decent fraction of the last 6 months either forecasting or thinking about forecasting, with an eye towards beliefs that I expect to be fairly generalizable to other endeavors. Before reading this post, I recommend brushing up on Tetlock's work on (super)forecasting, particularly Tetlock's 10 commandments for aspiring superforecasters. 1. Forming (good) outside views is often hard but not impossible. I think there is a common belief/framing in EA and rationalist circles that coming up with outside views is easy, and the real difficulty is a) originality in inside views, and also b) a debate of how much to trust outside views vs inside views. I think this is directionally true (original thought is harder than synthesizing existing views) but it hides a lot of the details. It's often quite difficult to come up with and balance good outside views that are applicable to a situation. See Manheim and Muelhauser for some discussions of this. 2. For novel out-of-distribution situations, "normal" people often trust centralized data/ontologies more than is warranted. See here for a discussion. I believe something similar is true for trust of domain experts, though this is more debatable. 3. The EA community overrates the predictive validity and epistemic superiority of forecasters/forecasting. (Note that I think this is an improvement over the status quo in the broader society, where by default approximately nobody trusts generalist forecasters at all) I've had several conversations where EAs will ask me to make a prediction, I'll think about it a bit and say something like "I dunno, 10%?"and people will treat it like a fully informed prediction to make decisions about, rather than just another source of information among many. I think this is clearly wrong. I think in almost any situation where you are a reasonable person and you spent 10x (sometimes 100x or more!) time thinking about a question then I have, you should just trust your own judgments much more than mine on the question. To a first approximation, good forecasters have three things: 1) They're fairly smart. 2) They're willing to actually do the homework. 3) They have an intuitive sense of probability. This is not nothing, but it's also pretty far from everything you want in a epistemic source. 4. The EA community overrates Superforecasters and Superforecasting techniques. I think the types of questions and responses Good Judgment . is interested in is a particular way to look at the world. I don't think it is always applicable (easy EA-relevant example: your Brier score is basically the same if you give 0% for 1% probabilities, and vice versa), and it's bad epistemics to collapse all of the "figure out the future in a quantifiable manner" to a single paradigm. Likewise, I don't think there's a clear dividing line between good forecasters and GJP-certified Superforecasters, so many of the issues I mentioned in #3 are just as applicable here. I'm not sure how to collapse all the things I've learned on this topic in a few short paragraphs, but the tl;dr is that I trusted superforecasters much more than I trusted other EAs before I started forecasting stuff, and now I consider their opinions and forecasts "just" an important overall component to my thinking, rather than a clear epistemic superior to defer to. 5. Good intuitions are really important. I think there's a Straw Vulcan approach to rationality where people think "good" rationality is about suppressing your System 1 in favor of clear th...

Global Guessing Podcasts
David McCullough on Why Good Forecasting Questions Matter! (GGWP 19)

Global Guessing Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2021 60:40


Welcome back to the Global Guessing Weekly Podcast. This week we are joined by David McCullough, Managing Director of Government Operations and Superforecaster and Good Judgement Inc. Prior to joining Good Judgement, David was an underwater Archaeologist for over twenty years after receiving his Ph.D. in Maritime Archeology from the University of Glasgow. In this week's episode, we talked to David about his background in Archaeology and the ways in which his training helped him become an elite forecaster. Afterwards, we discussed the importance of creating good forecasting questions and the qualities associated with them. We also chatted with David the importance of pre-mortem analysis and the roadblocks hindering government and private-sector adoption of forecasting and the principles outlined in Tetlock and Gardner's Superforecasting. We really enjoyed speaking with David, finding his answers thoughtful and insightful. If you did as well, make sure to check out Good Judgement's upcoming Superforecasting Workshop on December 8th and 9th at 12:00 - 2:30pm EST.

We Are Not Saved
A Deeper Understanding of How Bad Things Happen

We Are Not Saved

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2021 22:37


Risk comes in lots of different forms. In Skin in the Game, Taleb's last, underrated book. He breaks risk down into ensemble probabilities and time probabilities. On top of that he demonstrates that risk operates differently at different scales. And that if we want to avoid large scale ruin—ruin at the level of nations or all of humanity—that we should be trying to push risk down the scale. 

We Are Not Saved
Tetlock, the Taliban, and Taleb

We Are Not Saved

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2021 23:32


Philip Tetlock has been arguing for awhile that experts are horrible at prediction, but that his superforecasters do much better. If that's the case how did they do with respect to the fall of Afghanistan? As far as I can tell they didn't make any predictions on how long the Afghanistan government would last. Or they did make predictions and they were just as wrong as everyone else and they've buried them.  In light of this I thought it was time to revisit the limitations and distortions inherent in Tetlock's superforecasting project.

Increments
#29 - Some Scattered Thoughts on Superforecasting

Increments

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2021 45:20


We're back! Apologies for the delay, but Vaden got married and Ben was summoned to be an astronaut on the next billionaire's vacation to Venus. This week we're talking about how to forecast the future (with this one simple and easy trick! Astrologers hate them!). Specifically, we're diving into Philip Tetlock's work on Superforecasting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting:_The_Art_and_Science_of_Prediction). So what's the deal? Is it possible to "harness the wisdom of the crowd to forecast world events" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project)? Or is the whole thing just a result of sloppy statistics? We believe the latter is likely to be true with probability 64.9% - no, wait, 66.1%. Intro segment: "The Sentience Debate": The moral value of shrimps, insects, and oysters (https://www.facebook.com/103405457813911/videos/254164216090604) Relevant timestamps: 10:05: "Even if there's only a one in one hundred chance, or one in one thousand chance, that insects are sentient given current information, and if we're killing trillions or quadrillions of insects in ways that are preventable or avoidable or that we can in various ways mitigate that harm... then we should consider that possibility." 25:47: "If you're all going to work on pain in invertebrates, I pity you in many respects... In my previous work, I was used to running experiments and getting a clear answer, and I could say what these animals do and what they don't do. But when I started to think about what they might be feeling, you meet this frustration, that after maybe about 15 years of research, if someone asks me do they feel pain, my answer is 'maybe'... a strong 'maybe'... you cannot discount the possibility." 46:47: "It is not 100% clear to me that plants are non sentient. I do think that animals including insects are much more likely to be sentient than plants are, but I would not have a credence of zero that plants are sentient." 1:01:59: "So the hard problem I would like to ask the panel is: If you were to compare the moral weight of one ant to the moral weight of one human, what ratio would you put? How much more is a human worth than an ant? 100:1? 1000:1? 10:1? Or maybe 1:1? ... Let's start with Jamie." Main References: Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting:_The_Art_and_Science_of_Prediction) How Policymakers Can Improve Crisis Planning (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-10-13/better-crystal-ball) The Good Judgment Project - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project) Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?: Tetlock, Philip E.: 9780691128719: Books - Amazon.ca (https://www.amazon.ca/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715) Additional references mentioned in the episode: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drunkard%27s_Walk) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable) Book Review: Superforecasting | Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/04/book-review-superforecasting/) Pandemic Uncovers the Limitations of Superforecasting – We Are Not Saved (https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/04/18/pandemic-uncovers-the-ridiculousness-of-superforecasting/) My Final Case Against Superforecasting (with criticisms considered, objections noted, and assumptions buttressed) – We Are Not Saved (https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/05/30/my-final-case-against-superforecasting-with-criticisms-considered-objections-noted-and-assumptions-buttressed/) Use your Good Judgement and send us email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

International Intrigue Audio Edition
Braveheart 2.0 | What is superforecasting?

International Intrigue Audio Edition

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2021 15:49


Listen now | Will Scotland become independent for the first time since 1707? The CIA tries to predict the future through superforecasting. What is it? Get on the email list at internationalintrigue.substack.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/internationalintrigue/message

Global Guessing Podcasts
Israeli-Saudi Relations After Khashoggi, Korea ICBM Test in 2021, Road to Superforecasting (GGWP 2)

Global Guessing Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2021 53:54


Clay and Andrew are flying solo...or rather duo. In this week's episode of the Global Guessing Weekly Podcast we chat about the most pressing news from this week in geopolitics. Then we discuss our latest Metaculus Monday article regarding normalizing Israeli-Saudi relations before doing a live prediction on Metaculus! We also cover The Good Judgement Project's new Good Judgement Open challenges as well as talk about Marko Papic's book Geopolitical Alpha. Tune in for a good one!

The Pin Factory
EU Vaccine Woes, GameStop and Superforecasting

The Pin Factory

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2021 55:13


In this episode of The Pin Factory, the ASI's Matthew Lesh is joined by Daniel Pryor, Head of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute and Jonathon Kitson, ASI Fellow and Superforecaster. They discuss the EU's vaccine rollout woes, questions around short-selling in the wake of the GameStop saga, and the value of superforecasting. Guests: Matthew Lesh (Head of Research, Adam Smith Institute)  Daniel Pryor (Head of Programmes, Adam Smith Institute)  Jonathon Kitson (ASI Fellow and Superforecaster)  (Recorded on 2nd February 2021)

Rob Wiblin's top recommended EconTalk episodes v0.2 Feb 2020
Ranked #6 of all time: Philip Tetlock on Superforecasting

Rob Wiblin's top recommended EconTalk episodes v0.2 Feb 2020

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2020 59:44


Can you predict the future? Or at least gauge the probability of political or economic events in the near future? Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Superforecasting talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his work on assessing probabilities with teams of thoughtful amateurs. Tetlock finds that teams of amateurs trained in gathering information and thinking about it systematically outperformed experts in assigning probabilities of various events in a competition organized by IARPA, research agency under the Director of National Intelligence. In this conversation, Tetlock discusses the meaning, reliability, and usefulness of trying to assign probabilities to one-time events. Actually released 21 Dec 2015.

The Reflecting Pool
Superforecasting: E Pluribus Analysis

The Reflecting Pool

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2020 19:44


Experts draw on years of experience to detect patterns and make predictions when facing novel situations. US Secret Service Assistant Special Agent In Charge James Huse (Masters 1601/2) investigates decision making, cognitive biases, and how expert performance compares to those of novices with the same information.

JSEDirect with Simon Brown
JSE Direct 200: Superforecasting and Venture Capital investing

JSEDirect with Simon Brown

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2016 19:46


Simon Shares Where's the party? Review: Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner Great Davos 2016 report back presentation with Nicky Newton-King (JSE CEO) and Bronwyn Nielsen (CNBC Africa). Next week Thursday we have another JSE Power Hour on Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA). Clive Butkow GroTech A Venture Capital company one can invest into and receive a tax break thanks to the SARS section 12J clause. They then invest into disruptive internet based companies with the strategy buy, build, flip. ==== JSE – The JSE is a registered trademark of the JSE Limited. JSEDirect is an independent broadcast and is not endorsed or affiliated with, nor has it been authorised, or otherwise approved by JSE Limited. The views expressed in this programme are solely those of the presenter, and do not necessarily reflect the views of JSE Limited.