EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular) “The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting” by dschwarz, FutureSearch, Lawrence Phillips, hnykda, Peter Mühlbacher
Thanks to Eli Lifland, Molly Hickman, Değer Turan, and Evan Miyazono for reviewing drafts of this post. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Summary:
- Forecasters produce reasons and models that are often more valuable than the final forecasts
- Most of this value is being lost due to the historical practice & incentives of forecasting, and the difficulty of crowds to “adversarially collaborate”
- FutureSearch is a forecasting system with legible reasons and models at its core (examples at the end)
The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning
Ben Landau-Taylor of Bismarck Analysis wrote a piece on March 6 called “Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning”, citing a piece where he writes:
There has been a great deal of research on what criteria must be met for forecasting aggregations to be useful, and as Karger, Atanasov, and Tetlock argue, predictions of events such as the arrival of AGI [...]
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Outline:
(00:40) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning
(05:06) Those Who Seek Rationales, And Those Who Do Not
(07:21) So What Do Elite Forecasters Actually Know?
(10:30) The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting
(11:51) Facts: Cite Your Sources
(12:07) Reasons: So You Think You Can Persuade With Words
(14:25) Models: So You Think You Can Model the World
(17:56) There Is No Microeconomics of AGI
(19:39) 700 AI questions you say? Aren’t We In the Age of AI Forecasters?
(21:33) Towards “Towards Rationality Engines”
(23:10) Sample Forecasts With Reasons and Models
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First published:
April 2nd, 2024
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.