Thanks for this. The work I really want to see from more forecasting projects is an analysis of how much things that typically impact people’s lives can be predicted. Things like health, home-ownership, relationships, career, etc. Specifically, people’s levels of cooperate/defect against their future self seems really inconsistent. i.e. people work really hard for their future selves along certain dimensions and then defect along lots of others. This is mostly just mimetic momentum, but still. Even rigorous research figuring out exactly what actuaries know that can be applied practically by people would be good. After all, actuaries have really good life outcomes along lots of dimensions, which means that most aren’t taking advantage of the insights there.
My hope had been that 80k hours would have evolved to do more in this area but they’ve specialized narrower than that AFAICT.
Thanks for this. The work I really want to see from more forecasting projects is an analysis of how much things that typically impact people’s lives can be predicted. Things like health, home-ownership, relationships, career, etc. Specifically, people’s levels of cooperate/defect against their future self seems really inconsistent. i.e. people work really hard for their future selves along certain dimensions and then defect along lots of others. This is mostly just mimetic momentum, but still. Even rigorous research figuring out exactly what actuaries know that can be applied practically by people would be good. After all, actuaries have really good life outcomes along lots of dimensions, which means that most aren’t taking advantage of the insights there.
My hope had been that 80k hours would have evolved to do more in this area but they’ve specialized narrower than that AFAICT.