Astral Codex Ten

Insight

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Insight

Article

Insight is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between March 21, 2022 and May 13, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Insight is one of the leading platforms for predicting the Ukraine War right now”; “From Insight: You know a prediction market has really made it when its insane questions about Donald Trump start getting close to zero. Insight has almost made it”; “Sources: Manifold , CSPI , Metaculus , Polymarket , PredictIt , Insight , GJOpen”. It most often appears alongside CFTC, Manifold, Metaculus.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: March 21, 2022
  • Last seen: May 13, 2024

Appears In

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.

22
March 21, 2022 · Original source
If you like getting your news in this format, subscribe to the Metaculus Alert bot for more (and thanks to ACX Grants winner Nikos Bosse for creating it!) Insight Prediction: Still Alive, Somehow Insight Prediction was a collaboration between a Russia-based founder and a group of Ukrainian developers. So, uh, they’ve had a tough few weeks.
Inline links: Metaculus Alert bot, Insight Prediction
Insight Prediction was a collaboration between a Russia-based founder and a group of Ukrainian developers. So, uh, they’ve had a tough few weeks.
Inline links: Insight Prediction
I have made it to Puerto Rico! Thus, the base of Insight Prediction is now here in the US.
22
August 16, 2022 · Original source
The community consensus so far seems to be to try to avoid Kalshi as long as it can. There are some good real-money prediction markets open to non-Americans: Polymarket, Futuur, Hedgehog, and Insight Prediction, although Americans will find visits prohibited nationally, and I would never recommend violating precepts negligently. You could also try play-money markets like Manifold, or market-adjacent forecasting sites like Metaculus.
Inline links: Polymarket, Futuur, Hedgehog, Insight Prediction, Manifold, Metaculus
Source: Insight Prediction …members of the community it created, betting on its chances, using one of the many descendant sites it inspired. You can’t kill an idea.
Inline links: Insight Prediction
From Insight:
22
October 18, 2022 · Original source
Sources: Manifold, CSPI, Metaculus, Polymarket, PredictIt, Insight, GJOpen The lowest forecaster is higher than the highest pollster! Taking 538 as an example, forecasters range from 5 pp higher (Manifold) to 17 pp higher (PredictIt). Tournaments and real-money markets tend to give higher numbers than play-money sites. I would go with 47% on this one, based on the convergence between GJO, CSPI, and Polymarket. CFTC vs. PredictIt (and everyone else), Part II The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the US agency regulating prediction markets. In August, they told PredictIt (the biggest political prediction market) to shut down, effective in February. Now a motley group of stakeholders are suing the CFTC for a stay of execution. Plaintiffs include: 2 professors using the site as “a source of data for research”
Inline links: Manifold, CSPI, Metaculus, Polymarket, PredictIt, Insight, GJOpen, they told PredictIt
Several additional plaintiffs I can’t find good information about You can find the complaint here. The plaintiffs write: The [CFTC’s action], without explanation or other indication of reasoned decisionmaking, without “written notice of the facts or conduct which may warrant” the Revocation, and without providing anyone “an opportunity to demonstrate or achieve compliance” with the terms of No-Action Relief or other requirements, violates the Administrative Procedure Act. 5 U.S.C. §§ 558, 706. Among other things, the Revocation is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, [and/or] otherwise not in accordance with law” and occurred “without observance of procedure required by law.” The Court should “hold unlawful and set aside” the Revocation, including its command that contracts that would otherwise turn on events occurring after February 2023 be prematurely liquidated. 5 U.S.C. § 706. The Court also should enter a preliminary and then permanent injunction against the prescriptions in the Revocation requiring the liquidation of contracts by February 2023, including contracts that concern the 2024 elections, well before they would ordinarily mature. I am not a lawyer, but it sounds kind of like they’re saying “the decision was bad, and the Administrative Procedure Act says regulators shouldn’t do bad things”. I am split between the part of me which hates government regulators doing bad things, and the part of me which feels like this is how you get a cover-your-ass-ocracy that never does anything at all without fifteen layers of paperwork and ten trillion dollars per action. Whatever. At least this time it’s in my favor. Of course there are prediction markets about it: Source: Insight Prediction Nuclear Warcasting, Part 2 Samotsvety Forecasting is a team made of top prediction market players and tournament winners, vaguely affiliated with effective altruism, who make predictions in the public interest. Earlier this year, they got attention for forecasting the risk of nuclear war - in particular, they said there was an a 0.01% per month chance of London getting nuked this spring. Since then, most of the fear has crystallized into a specific scenario. Suppose Russia is losing very badly in Ukraine. Putin, fearing a coup or revolution at home if he gives up, decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon, ie a “small” nuke more suited to winning battles than destroying cities. He nukes a Ukrainian battlefield position. The West is enraged at this violation of the nuclear taboo and feels like it needs to respond decisively - maybe by nuking something on Russia’s side, or through some other act of extreme escalation. Then Russia feels like they need to respond, and eventually it escalates to strikes on major cities and global nuclear war. There are reasons for doubt. Tactical nukes wouldn’t really be useful in Ukraine; the battle lines are too spread out and there’s no single place where a nuclear explosion could take out a substantial portion of Ukraine’s forces. In the past, nuclear powers have accepted lost wars gracefully rather than turning to nukes. And the Russians deny it, and saying this is all just Western propaganda intended to scare people. Amid this uncertainty, Samotsvety has published an update: now they are at 16% chance that “Russia uses any type of nuclear weapon in Ukraine in the next year”, and 0.02% per month of a strike on London. Although they didn’t mention it this time, they previously said the risk of a strike on San Francisco was a little over half that of London; I don’t know if that’s changed. See also Dan Keys’ comment here for some skepticism of Samotsvety’s process. Swift Centre is a lot like Samotsvety; they’re a collection of top forecasters brought together by EA to make important predictions. They also took a swing at the nuclear question, and said 9.1% chance of a hostile nuclear detonation in Europe in the next six months. They didn’t calculate the risk that this would spread to global war, but they did discuss how different scenarios would bring the risk up or down: One of my hopes for forecasting is that it eventually becomes so well-validated that decision-makers can take these kinds of considerations into account: “Should we sent ATACMS missiles to Ukraine? It would have such-and-such benefits, but also increase the risk of nuclear escalation by 3.6%, is it worth it?” We can’t directly compare Samotsvety and Swift because they’re predicting over different time periods. But assuming that there’s more risk in the next six months than in the six months after that, I think Samotsvety is a little higher but they’re not embarrassingly far off. Metaculus is a bit more optimistic than either, believing there’s only a 4% chance of detonation in Ukraine in 2023 and a 7% chance of any use in the next ~year. Max Tegmark is going much higher than anyone else and says 16% chance of global nuclear war. Kalshi Applies For Election Markets Kalshi is a regulated and fully-legal prediction market with good lobbyists and a compliance team. This means the CFTC probably won’t randomly shut them down one day. But it also means they can only create new markets with CFTC permission. In July, Kalshi asked the CFTC for permission to make midterm election prediction markets - specifically, which party will win control of the House and Senate. The CFTC has said they will make a decision by October 28 (which doesn’t leave much time for predicting to happen before the November 8 election, but I guess it sets a precedent). September was the Request For Comment period, when the CFTC solicited comments from stakeholders about what they should do. Kalshi tried really hard to get lots of people to send in positive assessments - I know this because of how many people asked me “why is the CEO of Kalshi emailing me about this thing?” Their strategy seems to have worked; among the people who wrote to the CFTC in support were: A managing director at JP Morgan
Inline links: additional plaintiffs, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LaYa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0aaec309-35d6-430d-aeaa-b7cab022f4d6_548x215.png, Insight Prediction, Samotsvety Forecasting, Earlier this year, accepted lost wars gracefully, published an update, comment here, Swift Centre, They also took a swing at the nuclear question, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TczM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F702c1236-47d9-4c60-9b99-ab9b2ca320e7_737x377.png, a 4% chance, a 7% chance, 16% chance, In July, they will make a decision by October 28, A managing director at JP Morgan
Source: Insight, but note low volume
Inline links: Insight
24
May 13, 2024 · Original source
Polymarket and Insight already IP ban US users and claim not to be operating in the US, so they shouldn’t be directly affected. But it might alter some case tangentially involving them one way or another.