Open Thread 419
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This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:
1: Congratulations to the winners of last year’s ACX/Metaculus Forecasting Contest, especially:
Peter Wildeford, who placed 1st out of all 650 participants. Peter is a forecasting celebrity, a leader at EA organizations Rethink Priorities and Institute For AI Policy and Strategy, and a blogger at The Power Law. He regularly makes the top 20 or so, but this year he was able to close the distance and take the top spot. I often rely on his blogging for my geopolitical opinions, and these contest results suggest that you should too. Peter is also the first ACX Forecasting Contest winner to have been featured on the Daily Show:
mAd-topo, Haiku, PlankFlank, and Andrew Clough, who placed 2nd through 5th, respectively. I don’t know these people, but they can email me (scott[at]slatestarcodex[dot]com) if they want me to profile them or signal-boost their work on a future Open Thread.
GreeneiBot2, the contest’s highest-ranking bot, who placed 9th out of 650 participants, mostly human. Another bot, metac-o1+asknews, came in 11th. Some work from the Forecasting Research Institute suggests that bot forecasters will overtake humans sometime in late 2026, and these AIs are clearly chomping at the bit to make it happen. If you’re the person or team behind either of these, send me an email and I’ll profile you.
All of these winners got approximately $100. And thanks again to Metaculus for making this happen. You can follow along with the 2026 contest here, although it’s too late to participate.