Scott Alexander analyzes the results of his 2023 forecasting contest, comparing various prediction methods and individual forecasters. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews the results of his 2023 annual forecasting contest, where participants predicted 50 questions about the upcoming year. He discusses the winners in both 'Blind Mode' (relying on personal knowledge) and 'Full Mode' (using aggregation algorithms). The post analyzes the performance of various forecasting methods, including individual forecasters, prediction markets, superforecasters, and aggregation techniques. Scott concludes that Metaculus, a forecasting platform, outperformed other methods, though some individual forecasters showed exceptional skill. He also examines which 2023 events were most surprising to forecasters and shares his main takeaways from the contest. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander investigates the 'wisdom of crowds' hypothesis using survey data, exploring its effectiveness and potential applications. Longer summary

Scott Alexander discusses the 'wisdom of crowds' hypothesis, which claims that the average of many guesses is better than a single guess. He tests this concept using data from his ACX Survey, focusing on a question about the distance between Moscow and Paris. The post explores how error rates change with crowd size, whether individuals can benefit from averaging multiple guesses, and compares his findings to a larger study by Van Dolder and Van Den Assem. Scott also ponders why wisdom of crowds isn't more widely used in decision-making and speculates on its potential applications and limitations. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander analyzes results from a 2022 prediction contest, discussing top performers and methods for improving forecast accuracy. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews the results of a 2022 prediction contest where 508 participants assigned probabilities to 71 yes-or-no questions about future events. The post discusses the performance of individual forecasters, aggregation methods, and prediction markets. It highlights the success of superforecasters, the wisdom of crowds, and prediction markets. The article also announces winners, discusses demographic factors in forecasting ability, and introduces a new contest for 2023, emphasizing the potential for improving forecasting accuracy through various methods. Shorter summary

A study on expert prediction of behavioral economics experiments finds that experts have only a slight advantage over non-experts, suggesting that a separate 'rationality' skill may be more important than specific expertise. Longer summary

This post discusses a study by DellaVigna & Pope on expert prediction of behavioral economics experiments. The study found that knowledgeable academics had only a slight advantage over random individuals in predicting experimental results. Prestigious academics did not outperform less prestigious ones, and field of expertise did not matter. The expert advantage was small and easily overwhelmed by wisdom of crowds effects. The author suggests that these results indicate that experts' expertise may not be helping them much in this context, and proposes that a separate 'rationality' skill, somewhat predicted by high IQ and scientific training but not identical to either, might explain the results. The post also discusses the implications of these findings for real-world issues like election predictions, noting important caveats about the nature of the predictive task in the study. Shorter summary