I hesitate because I suspect it’s better if most people who are willing to just make a forecast here without having recently looked at the predictions in that database, so we get a larger collection of more independent views.
But I guess people can make their own decision about whether to look at the database, perhaps for cases where:
People just feel too unsure where to start with forecasting this to bother trying, but if they saw other people’s forecasts they’d be willing to come up with their own forecast that does more than just totally parroting the existing forecasts
And it’s necessary to do more than just parroting, as the existing forecasts are about % chance by a given date, not the % chance at each date over a period
People could perhaps come up with clever ways to decide how much weight to give each forecast and how to translate them into an Elicit snapshot
People make their own forecast, but then want to check the database and consider making tweaks before posting it here (ideally also showing here what their original, independent forecast was)
Here are a couple sources people might find useful for guiding how they try to break this question down and reason about it:
An analysis and evaluation of methods currently used to quantify the likelihood of existential hazards by Beard et al. (Beard being a CSER researcher)
Quantifying the Probability of Existential Catastrophe: A Reply to Beard et al. by Seth Baum of GCRI
I provide a partial summary and commentary on this here
I’ll also hesitantly mention my database of existential risk estimates.
I hesitate because I suspect it’s better if most people who are willing to just make a forecast here without having recently looked at the predictions in that database, so we get a larger collection of more independent views.
But I guess people can make their own decision about whether to look at the database, perhaps for cases where:
People just feel too unsure where to start with forecasting this to bother trying, but if they saw other people’s forecasts they’d be willing to come up with their own forecast that does more than just totally parroting the existing forecasts
And it’s necessary to do more than just parroting, as the existing forecasts are about % chance by a given date, not the % chance at each date over a period
People could perhaps come up with clever ways to decide how much weight to give each forecast and how to translate them into an Elicit snapshot
People make their own forecast, but then want to check the database and consider making tweaks before posting it here (ideally also showing here what their original, independent forecast was)