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Published: Feb. 1, 2023, 5:26 a.m.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-1302023

One million Metaculi, fake stocks, scandal markets again Happy One Millionth Prediction, Metaculus

Metaculus celebrated its one millionth user forecast with a hackathon, a series of talks, and a party:

This was a helpful reminder that Metaculus is a real organization, not just a site I go to sometimes to check the probabilities of things. The company is run remotely; catching nine of them in a room together was a happy coincidence.

Although I think it still relies heavily on grants, Metaculus\u2019 theoretical business model is to create forecasts on important topics for organizations that want them (\u201cpartners\u201d) - so far including universities, tech companies, and charities. A typical example is this recent forecasting tournament on the spread of COVID in Virginia, run in partnership with the Virginia Department of Health and the University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute (this year\u2019s version here).

The main bottleneck is interest from policy-makers, which they\u2019re trying to solve both through product improvement and public education. In December, Metaculus\u2019 Director of Nuclear Risk, Peter Scoblic, published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine about forecasting\u2019s \u201cstruggle for legitimacy\u201d in the foreign policy world. It\u2019s paywalled, but quoting liberally: