Astral Codex Ten

Full Mode

4 min read

Full Mode

Article

Full Mode is a recurring event in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 16, 2022 and March 05, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Full Mode predictions from then until February 1”; “Then I released the list … asked people to analyze with … ’Full Mode’“. It most often appears alongside Blind Mode, Manifold, Metaculus.

Metadata

  • Category: Events
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: December 16, 2022
  • Last seen: March 05, 2024

Appears In

None.

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

2023 Prediction Contest
December 16, 2022 · Original source
You can either play Blind Mode or Full Mode. On Blind Mode, you can’t look at any prediction markets, or anyone else’s answers to the contest, and you can only research a maximum of five minutes per question. On Full Mode, you can look at whatever other sources you want and research for as long as you want. Most people will probably want to play in Blind Mode. If you want, you can start with Blind Mode and submit another response in Full Mode later. You might want to wait until January 10 to start playing in Full Mode, see below for details.
Blind mode will probably take ~30-60 minutes. Full mode will take longer.
I’m planning to give out at least 4 x $500 prizes: one for winner of Blind Mode, one for winner of Full Mode, one for winner of Blind Mode answering lots of questions (> 75%? 100%?) - and one to a randomly selected participant, so that even people who aren’t geniuses still have an incentive to play. I’ll increase this if my finances are going well next year, and other people interested in forecasting can add to this prize pool if they want.
Who Predicted 2023?
March 05, 2024 · Original source
Then I released the list of 3300 x 50 guesses, and asked people to analyze them with the aggregation algorithm of their choice to produce what they thought was the best possible list. 460 of you took me up on that (“Full Mode”). Then I waited until 2024 and sent everything to Eric Neyman, who’s better at math than I am. He used the Metaculus scoring function to assess everyone’s accuracy. Thanks to Eric (and to Sam Marks, who helped last time around) for taking care of this. II. And The Winners Are . . . For Blind Mode - where you had to rely on your wits alone and couldn’t spend more than five minutes per question - the winners are: Small Singapore gave me no information except this pseudonym and won’t answer any emails. I don’t even know how to give them their prize money. Please email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com if this is you.
Inline links: the Metaculus scoring function
Kiran Saini is a training surgeon in Oxford, and has a forthcoming book about core surgical training. He runs an impact-focused charity called OxPal that helps train doctors in Palestine. He says “I have no forecasting experience, but have long been interested in forecasting theory.” And there was also Full Mode, where you could read everyone else’s predictions first, check prediction markets, apply whatever algorithms you wanted, and take as long as you needed. While the Blind Mode winners were amateurs or completely unidentifiable, the Full Mode winners were mostly long-time forecasting veterans. Douglas Campbell is an economics professor, former member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, and analyst for the Democratic National Committee. He currently runs Insight Prediction, a cryptocurrency-based prediction market. Despite him owning a prediction market, our questions didn’t overlap with his and he gained no advantage from it. He still got the single highest score of anyone in this tournament.
Inline links: OxPal, Insight Prediction
Peter Wildeford, a superforecaster who got 20th place last year, got 12th place in Full Mode and 65th in Blind Mode this year, putting him in the 98th-99th percentile.