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Alicorn comments on PredictionBook: A Short Note - Less Wrong
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Comments (37)
I don't think in numbers, so I would expect to do really really badly for a really really long time, and I'm shy about things I realize I'm bad at. If I were going to embark on a long-term project to log lots of predictions for my own calibration and learning-what-percentages-feel-like, a text file on my own computer would do, wouldn't it? I'd know if I tampered with it.
On occasions when I'm confident about a specific prediction and don't feel shy about it, I prefer to just take some money from a nearby disagreer. I suppose if I wanted to make a longer-term bet, PredictionBook might be an okay place to stash the commitment if it's set up for that? Is it? But I feel like I'd be likely to forget about a long term bet so I'd rather avoid making them.
I'm probably more numerically inclined than you are but one thing I've found to be really helpful is that PredictionBook has given me much more of a feel for what things like "60%" or "95%" mean in the real world. How confident does that really translate into to be accurate? The effort involved is minimal and the payoff can be subtle but high.
But how does PredictionBook help with that over a little text file where I would write things like "60%: That fleebs are spruckled by 2012; that thus-and-such experiment confirms that glox is a form of spolk; that abritsens are publicly repudiated by Mr. Blafwem before such time as he resigns" or whatever things I might actually be disposed to register predictions about?
Graphing is pretty nice to have, as it fixes a rather more-than-trivial inconvenience; I'm not sure even I care enough to figure out how to munge a raw text file into a proper calibration graph (generated using... what, GraphViz? I don't even know where to start) to look at and go 'oh, I'm really underconfident in the 10/90% range, why is that?'
It doesn't help that aspect that directly at all.
Although I think having the ability to see what other people have predicted helps prevent lies to oneself especially of the form "well, that was just a black swan". When someone else predicted the other direction or simply had much reduced confidence one isn't able to say that.
Some important information about the world is currently communicated in numbers (for example, statistics on likely causes of death). PredictionBook may be a good way of learning to feel those numbers?
You can make your predictions private.
In which case the advantage of putting them on PredictionBook is what?
PredictionBook supports "When will you know?" and "Email me when I should know the outcome", so you can make a long term prediction and set a reminder date.
Not forgetting about them, maybe? If I'm going to write something down for myself that I'm going to want to remember months or years later, I'd rather do it online somewhere where I can be sure I won't simply lose track of it.