• Last year, 508 people were asked to assign percentage chances to 71 yes-or-no questions about the future.
• Log-loss scoring was used to grade everyone’s probability estimates, with lower scores being better.
• Superforecasters outscored 84% of other participants, and an aggregate created by averaging all 508 participants’ guesses scored at the 84th percentile.
• Prediction markets did extraordinarily well, scoring at the 99.5th percentile.
• The single best forecaster of the 508 participants got a score of 25.68.
• Seven people placed in the top five spots, including a data scientist at Amazon’s forecasting division, a high school dropout, and a former trader and professional Magic player.
• Users with self-reported IQ > 150 may have outperformed everyone else.
• Sam, Eric and Scott are running a repeat version of the contest for 2023, with 3500 entries so far.
• Superforecaster aggregation and prediction markets are expected to beat most individual predictors.
• Estimating the chance of a cease-fire in Ukraine is difficult and uncertain, but various methods can be used to increase accuracy.
• These methods include various groups, sources, and aggregation methods, but none of them are the most accurate source of forecasts.
• The most accurate source of forecasts would be Putin and Zelenskyy, who could have secret plans they haven’t announced.
• The goal is to increase knowledge efficiency by using the information available to the general public and a few minutes of reflection to gain as much accuracy as possible.
Published January 24, 2023
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