The median is 65% so it seems most people (at least, out of those who have responded here) seem to agree with my 10-year timeline for important discoveries.
I haven’t used Metaculus before and I don’t know what value I could bring by signing up for Metaculus and adding new questions. I intuit that my time would be better spent progressing the research forward so the optimistic predictions actually occur, rather than endless forecasting.
That said, I don’t know much about how Metaculus works. If you think it’s a good platform for outreach and educating people about the field then I would consider it. Or, if you think there are certain kinds of questions I should ask (e.g. regarding the success of individual anti-aging approaches, maybe?). Let me know.
When it comes to good long-term strategy and investment of resources understanding how the future likely looks like can be helpful. The act of writing a good Metaculus question is about operationalizing thinking about the future.
A question on the likelihood that research that’s spun out of SENS leads to an FDA approved drug might be useful for outreach. Both getting people to seriously think about the likelihood is useful and also to be able to use it when talking about the value of donating to SENS to rationalists.
For people outside the field it’s hard to evaluate the value of SENS by reading papers on their website. On the other hand likelihood to lead to a FDA approved drug is a metric that’s a lot easier to think about. Maybe you also have a better idea then likelihood of a FDA approved drug for your vision of the effect that SENS will have.
It seems to me like your thoughts about the importance of biomarkers of aging could also form the basis for questions. Thinking about good questions is about thinking what kind of events will be important in the next 20 years and building clarity about that is useful.
That seems like it could be a good idea. A few more questions though:
How would writing the question help to convince people? Would it not only be convincing in 5-10 years’ time if some of the predictions turn out to be accurate? Or, do you think if consensus on a Metaculus question that prediction X will occur is in and of itself convincing for rationalists?
I’m still a little uncertain about the practical benefit of writing questions, in helping to advance the technologies.
How would writing the question help to convince people? Would it not only be convincing in 5-10 years’ time if some of the predictions turn out to be accurate? Or, do you think if consensus on a Metaculus question that prediction X will occur is in and of itself convincing for rationalists?
I would personally find a consensus on Metaculus pretty convincing (at least, conditional on there being a significant amount of predictions for the question). I find it hard to gauge other people’s expertise and how much to defer to them, especially when I just see their point of view. Aggregating many people’s predictions is much more persuasive to me, and many of the top Metaculus predictors seem to have good epistemics.
It might be worthwhile to formulate some of those predictions into Metaculus questions.
It’s a good idea.
There is already one on essentially this topic:
Will there be a culturally significant development in aging research by 2030?
The median is 65% so it seems most people (at least, out of those who have responded here) seem to agree with my 10-year timeline for important discoveries.
And this is another one anti-aging-related:
Will a senolytic therapy be approved for commercial sale by the United States Food and Drug Administration before January 1 2030?
The median is 58% for this one.
I haven’t used Metaculus before and I don’t know what value I could bring by signing up for Metaculus and adding new questions. I intuit that my time would be better spent progressing the research forward so the optimistic predictions actually occur, rather than endless forecasting.
That said, I don’t know much about how Metaculus works. If you think it’s a good platform for outreach and educating people about the field then I would consider it. Or, if you think there are certain kinds of questions I should ask (e.g. regarding the success of individual anti-aging approaches, maybe?). Let me know.
When it comes to good long-term strategy and investment of resources understanding how the future likely looks like can be helpful. The act of writing a good Metaculus question is about operationalizing thinking about the future.
A question on the likelihood that research that’s spun out of SENS leads to an FDA approved drug might be useful for outreach. Both getting people to seriously think about the likelihood is useful and also to be able to use it when talking about the value of donating to SENS to rationalists.
For people outside the field it’s hard to evaluate the value of SENS by reading papers on their website. On the other hand likelihood to lead to a FDA approved drug is a metric that’s a lot easier to think about. Maybe you also have a better idea then likelihood of a FDA approved drug for your vision of the effect that SENS will have.
It seems to me like your thoughts about the importance of biomarkers of aging could also form the basis for questions. Thinking about good questions is about thinking what kind of events will be important in the next 20 years and building clarity about that is useful.
That seems like it could be a good idea. A few more questions though:
How would writing the question help to convince people? Would it not only be convincing in 5-10 years’ time if some of the predictions turn out to be accurate? Or, do you think if consensus on a Metaculus question that prediction X will occur is in and of itself convincing for rationalists?
I’m still a little uncertain about the practical benefit of writing questions, in helping to advance the technologies.
I would personally find a consensus on Metaculus pretty convincing (at least, conditional on there being a significant amount of predictions for the question). I find it hard to gauge other people’s expertise and how much to defer to them, especially when I just see their point of view. Aggregating many people’s predictions is much more persuasive to me, and many of the top Metaculus predictors seem to have good epistemics.
Great—have you seen the existing Metaculus questions on anti-aging by Matthew Barnett and others?
Ooh, no. That’s super interesting, thanks!