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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Forecasting Newsletter: April 2022, published by NunoSempere on May 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Highlights The US CDC creates a pandemic forecasting center Tetlock's forecasting team is recruiting for a new tournament on existential risk Manifold Markets makes their webpage open-source Index Notable news Platform by platform Correction on Polymarket incentivizing wash-trading. Shortform research Longform research You can sign up for this newsletter on substack, or browse past newsletters here. The state of forecasting: Where next? At the high level, various new startups have been exploring different parts of the forecasting and prediction market space. Most recently, Manifold Markets allows anyone to easily instantly create a market, which comes at the cost of these markets having to use play money. And Polymarket or Insight Prediction have set up real-money prediction markets on some topics of real interest. Our hope is that with time, a new project might stumble upon a winning combination, one that is able to produce large amounts of value by allowing people to pay for more accurate probabilities, even when these are unflattering. Putting on my Scott Alexander hat, prediction markets or forecasting systems have the potential to be a powerful asymmetric weapon (a): a sword of good that systematically favours the side which seeks the truth. A channel which is able to transmit accurate information even when the evil forces of Moloch (a) would seek to prevent this. In Linux circles, there is the meme of "the year of the Linux desktop": a magical year in which people realize that Windows adds little value, and that Linux is based. A year in which people would together switch to Linux (a) and sing John Lennon. Instead, Linux, much like prediction markets, remains a powerful yet obscure tool which only a few cognoscenti can wield. So although I may wax poetically about the potential of prediction markets, "the year of the prediction market" has yet to come, much like "the year of the Linux desktop". To get there, there needs to be investment in accessibility and popularization. And so I am happy to see things like the Forecasting Wiki (a), simpler apps (a), popular writers introducing prediction markets to their audiences, or platforms experimenting with simplifying some of the complexity of prediction markets, or with combining the ideas behind prediction markets in new ways and exploring the space of prediction market-like things. It might also be wise for prediction markets to take a more confrontational stance (a), by challenging powerful people who spout bullshit. Notable news The CDC has a new (a), $200M center (a) for pandemic forecasting. When Walensky tapped outside experts to head the new outfit, the move was widely viewed as an acknowledgment of long-standing and systemic failures regarding surveillance, data collection and preparedness that were put into high relief by the pandemic. Scientists will also look at who is infecting whom, how well vaccines protect against infection and severe illness, and how that depends on the vaccine, variants and the time since vaccination, said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist and the center’s science director. The center will be based in D.C. and will eventually have about 100 staff members, including some at CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. It will report to Walensky. This is, broadly speaking, good. But it also seems like too little, too late. It seems suboptimal to have this center report to the CDC director, given that the CDC's leadership wasn't particularly shining during the pandemic. And the center is playing defence against the last black swan, whereas I would prefer to see measures which could defend against unknown unknowns, such as this one (a). I recently stumbled upon a few prediction markets previously...