diff --git a/blog/2020/03/10/Shapley_Values_II/index.md b/blog/2020/03/10/Shapley_Values_II/index.md
index ae2490d..de1e35d 100755
--- a/blog/2020/03/10/Shapley_Values_II/index.md
+++ b/blog/2020/03/10/Shapley_Values_II/index.md
@@ -527,13 +527,13 @@ To conclude, commenters in the last post emphasized that one should not consider
## Appendix: A more complicated worked example.
-Suppose that you have two players, player a and Player B, and three charities: GiveDirectly, SCI, and the Not Quite Optimal Charity (NQOC).
+Suppose that you have two players, player a and Player B, and three charities: GiveDirectly, SCI, and the Not Quite Optimal Charity (NQOC). Then, if y is the value, and x is the amount of spending, suppose you have:
| Charity | Value for A | Value for B |
|---------|-----------------------------------|-------------|
-| GD | y=x | y=x |
+| GD | y=x | y=x |
| SCI | y=2x if x<10, y=x/2 + 15 if x>=10 | y=2x |
-| NQOC | 1/10 | 1/5 |
+| NQOC | y=1/10x | y=1/5x |
Or, in graph form:
@@ -571,3 +571,11 @@ In particular, if B donates only to SCI, then the value of cooperating is:
Now, we have the interesting scenario in which A is willing to sell their share of the impact for `X/4 - 1/20`, but B is willing to buy it for more, that is, for `X - 1/10`. In this case, suppose that they come to a gentleman's agreement and decide that the fair price is `(X/4 - 1/20)/2 + (X - 1/10)/2`, which simplified, is equal to `(5 X)/8 - 3/40`.
Now, player B then donates X to SCI and buys player A's certificates of impact for that donation (which are cheaper than continuing to donate). If they spend the million, then `X + (5 X)/8 - 3/40 = 1`, so X≈0.66, that is, 0.66 million are donated to SCI, whereas 0.34 million are spent buying certificates of impact from player A, which then donates that to GiveDirectly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/blog/2020/04/01/International_Supply_Chain/index.md b/blog/2020/04/01/International_Supply_Chain/index.md
index 6d6b471..9938a42 100755
--- a/blog/2020/04/01/International_Supply_Chain/index.md
+++ b/blog/2020/04/01/International_Supply_Chain/index.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
New Cause Proposal: International Supply Chain Accountability
==============
-\[Epistemic Status: Totally serious; altered afterwards to remove some April Fool's content. Thanks to Aaron Gertler for reading a version of this draft.\]
+Epistemic Status: Totally serious; altered afterwards to remove some April Fool's content. Thanks to Aaron Gertler for reading a version of this draft.
# Related material
@@ -23,11 +23,11 @@ I think that one useful way to define the term is
One could also understand supply chain accountability as a goal (making multinational companies less exploitative) rather than as a strategy, in the same way that one could understand effective altruism in terms of its ideals, rather than in terms of the specific strategies which it employs.
-Example 1: After the collapse of a Bangladeshi garment factory which killed more than a thousand people \[[source / en](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Dhaka_garment_factory_collapse)\], a media shitstorm happened around the world. Transforming the temporary flare in outrage into specific and lasting commitments and agreements was the work of many organizations \[1\] under the banner of the concept of supply chain accountability. See: [The Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety](https://bangladeshaccord.org/)
+Example 1: After the collapse of a Bangladeshi garment factory which killed more than a thousand people [source / en](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Dhaka_garment_factory_collapse), a media shitstorm happened around the world. Transforming the temporary flare in outrage into specific and lasting commitments and agreements was the work of many organizations [1] under the banner of the concept of supply chain accountability. See: [The Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety](https://bangladeshaccord.org/)
-Example 2: Supply chain accountability in the case of Inditex, one of the biggest multinationals in the textile industry, over the last 20 years: \[[source / es](http://relats.org/documentos/GLOBBoixGarrido.pdf)\]:
+Example 2: Supply chain accountability in the case of Inditex, one of the biggest multinationals in the textile industry, over the last 20 years: [source / es](http://relats.org/documentos/GLOBBoixGarrido.pdf):
-* Inditex signed a "Global Framework Agreement" with Comisiones Obreras (later also with the global federation IndustriALL), and this agreement was later renewed \[[source / en](http://www.industriall-union.org/global-framework-agreements)\].
+* Inditex signed a "Global Framework Agreement" with Comisiones Obreras (later also with the global federation IndustriALL), and this agreement was later renewed [source / en](http://www.industriall-union.org/global-framework-agreements).
* Comisiones Obreras carried out some investigative work in every country in which Inditex has factories, with the aim of identifying the issues which caused the most harm in each place, and slowly taking measures to improve them. For example, if a factory had fired workers which tried to syndicate, they convice the factory to rehire the workers. If a factory had hired people below working age, they made sure that these workers get enough money to complete their primary and secondary education.
* An auditing system was erected, in which Inditex itself audits their own contractors, after which Comisiones Obreras, which has less capacity, visits and audits ~2% of factories themselves.
* The philosophical underpinnings of such a Global Agreement were developed further. For example, professors at Spanish universities theorize about the topic and teach about it, providing a philosophical or moral basis about why supply chain accountability is positive and necessary. However, this is a posteriori.
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ Example 2: Supply chain accountability in the case of Inditex, one of the bigges
Gut feeling: Very large.
-Multinational companies employ a lot of people, directly or indirectly, on their chain of production. In the case of Inditex, this corresponds to 2.2 million people, distributed across 5,000 factories in 40 countries \[[source / es / 2019](http://iboix.blogspot.com/2019/12/el-acuerdo-marco-global-de-industriall.html)\]. This has grown from ~1 million in 2014 \[[source / es](http://iboix.blogspot.com/2014/07/renovacion-del-acuerdo-marco-global-de.html)\].
+Multinational companies employ a lot of people, directly or indirectly, on their chain of production. In the case of Inditex, this corresponds to 2.2 million people, distributed across 5,000 factories in 40 countries [source / es / 2019](http://iboix.blogspot.com/2019/12/el-acuerdo-marco-global-de-industriall.html). This has grown from ~1 million in 2014 [source / es](http://iboix.blogspot.com/2014/07/renovacion-del-acuerdo-marco-global-de.html).
Given the number of people involved, reducing the incidence of fatal accidents, sexual abuse, exploitative working conditions, making those working conditions marginally better, marginally increasing wages, might be impactful, as would accelerating the rate at which that happens. [Here](https://www.getguesstimate.com/models/14645) is a back-of-the-envelope Guesstimate model which incorporates the number of people in Inditex's chain of production and their estimated work times, in order to calculate the estimated lives saved due to the fire and safety accord mentioned above.
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ How tractable is this for the EA community in particular? Here are some consider
* The EA community doesn't really have a strong track record in this area, whereas other groups and organizations, like the federation [IndustriALL](http://www.industriall-union.org/) (of which Comisiones Obreras, a national worker’s union, is an affiliate) seems to be doing ok.
* CEA seems to be averse to public attention, though this may not apply to the EA community in general.
-* On the other hand, the animal suffering movement has recently had a series of very visible victories using similar methods. Incidentally, it seems that some insights were rediscovered; perhaps the animal suffering movement could learn more effectively from trade unionism victories and defeats, and vice-versa. For example, trade unionists have historically relied more on newspapers and organizing demonstrations, and not used Facebook ads as aggressively as the animal suffering movement (but perhaps could). In the other direction, I think that actors in the space of supply chain accountability realized the importance of independent audits for pledges somewhat earlier than animal suffering movement \[2\].
+* On the other hand, the animal suffering movement has recently had a series of very visible victories using similar methods. Incidentally, it seems that some insights were rediscovered; perhaps the animal suffering movement could learn more effectively from trade unionism victories and defeats, and vice-versa. For example, trade unionists have historically relied more on newspapers and organizing demonstrations, and not used Facebook ads as aggressively as the animal suffering movement (but perhaps could). In the other direction, I think that actors in the space of supply chain accountability realized the importance of independent audits for pledges somewhat earlier than animal suffering movement [2].
## Neglectedness
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ Gut feeling: Many stakeholders, but I'm unclear what their average level of effe
While researching the area, I got the impression of a proliferation of stakeholders (IndustriALL, MSI-TN, FairTrade Initiative, the ILO, etc.), such that an additional stakeholder of average effectiveness would just stand in the way. It might thus make more sense to support and expand existing organizations (chiefly, IndustriALL), whereas with manpower or with funds.
-An additional point is that if several organizations define corporate responsibility differently, companies have a tendency to choose the least demanding definitions, so an additional organization might instead only be able to do harm. \[3\]
+An additional point is that if several organizations define corporate responsibility differently, companies have a tendency to choose the least demanding definitions, so an additional organization might instead only be able to do harm. [3]
Tangentially, some of the primary sources for Inditex's agreement were in Spanish, and I wonder whether EA has neglected charities in Spanish-speaking countries because of this language barrier. On this point, I have copious notes on the aforementioned agreement & related sources, which are available, in Spanish, [here](https://nunosempere.github.io/ea/CCOO-Inditex)
@@ -80,11 +80,11 @@ In particular, both IndustriALL and the unions it is composed of already have a
## Does Inditex's Agreement generalize?
-Or was Inditex just particularly cooperative? It does seem that Inditex was particularly cooperative, in comparison to, for example, another Spanish retailer which goes by the name of [Mango](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango_(retailer)). Which other companies would be similarly influenced by the public opinion in their own countries?
+Or was Inditex just particularly cooperative? It does seem that Inditex was particularly cooperative, in comparison to, for example, another Spanish retailer which goes by the name of [Mango](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango_%28retailer%29). Which other companies would be similarly influenced by the public opinion in their own countries?
Is any EA local group organized well enough that a corporate accountability campaign targeting a particular company could be created and carried out, resulting in all factories in its direct and indirect chain of production being audited, within 10 years? Would there be any company particularly well-suited enough for this?
-In particular, I’d intuitively expect convincing a previously reluctant company to sign such a supply chain accountability agreement a to be comparable in hardness to the one which [doubled Zurich’s development aid](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dTdSnbBB2g65b2Fb9/eaf-s-ballot-initiative-doubled-zurich-s-development-aid) \[4\].
+In particular, I’d intuitively expect convincing a previously reluctant company to sign such a supply chain accountability agreement a to be comparable in hardness to the one which [doubled Zurich’s development aid](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dTdSnbBB2g65b2Fb9/eaf-s-ballot-initiative-doubled-zurich-s-development-aid) [4].
## How do you quantify the impact of corporate responsibility campaigns?
@@ -99,28 +99,34 @@ Estimating the validity of this theory of systemic change could also be done by
# Conclusions
-I am ignorant of how the marginal impact of work in this area compares to other policy work. The biggest thing international supply chain accountability has going for it is the _scale_; it could potentially absorb both great quantities of money and effort, and positively affect the lives of a very large number of people \[5\]
+I am ignorant of how the marginal impact of work in this area compares to other policy work. The biggest thing international supply chain accountability has going for it is the _scale_; it could potentially absorb both great quantities of money and effort, and positively affect the lives of a very large number of people [5]
-The negatives are the poor fit between EA and the trade unionism movement. In particular, EA isn't really conscious of its sometimes petty-bourgeois character \[6\], whereas trade unionism, having marxist roots and inclinations, takes class differences seriously. For example, Comisiones Obreras still is a communist/socialist organization (but less so than in the past). It is possible that having these organizations accept money would take some work, but I also believe that they could meaningfully use it.
+The negatives are the poor fit between EA and the trade unionism movement. In particular, EA isn't really conscious of its sometimes petty-bourgeois character [6], whereas trade unionism, having marxist roots and inclinations, takes class differences seriously. For example, Comisiones Obreras still is a communist/socialist organization (but less so than in the past). It is possible that having these organizations accept money would take some work, but I also believe that they could meaningfully use it.
Overall, perhaps International Supply Chain Accountability would be a good target for a [shallow investigation](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/cause-selection#Shallow_investigations) by any EA organization which wishes to diversify their moral parliament.
---
-\[1\] Which organizations? The \[Bangladesh Accord website\] mentions:
+[1] : Which organizations? The [Bangladesh Accord website](https://bangladeshaccord.org/) mentions:
> “The Accord is a legally-binding agreement between global brands & retailers and IndustriALL Global Union & UNI Global Union and eight of their Bangladeshi affiliated unions to work towards a safe and healthy garment and textile industry in Bangladesh.”
These two global unions are, in practice, meta-unions, to which many other organizations are affiliated, like Comisiones Obreras in Spain.
-\[2\] See: [Will companies meet their animal welfare commitments?](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XdekdWJWkkhur9gvr/will-companies-meet-their-animal-welfare-commitments)
+[2] : See: [Will companies meet their animal welfare commitments?](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XdekdWJWkkhur9gvr/will-companies-meet-their-animal-welfare-commitments)
-\[3\] I can’t remember which organization was said to be less strict than the rest, and trying to track it down brings [unrelated criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fairtrade_Certification_Mark#Criticism) of FairTrade in the food producing sector, rather than in the textile industry.
+[3] : I can’t remember which organization was said to be less strict than the rest, and trying to track it down brings [unrelated criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fairtrade_Certification_Mark#Criticism) of FairTrade in the food producing sector, rather than in the textile industry.
-\[4\] For example, what's up with Adidas in Germany? Is their [corporate responsibility approach](https://www.adidas-group.com/en/sustainability/managing-sustainability/general-approach/#/people-priorities-for-2020/) just blabber? (Most likely.) Do they have independent auditors? (Most likely not.)
+[4] : For example, what's up with Adidas in Germany? Is their [corporate responsibility approach](https://www.adidas-group.com/en/sustainability/managing-sustainability/general-approach/#/people-priorities-for-2020/) just blabber? (Most likely.) Do they have independent auditors? (Most likely not.)
-\[5\] This assessment also applies to marxist revolution more generally.
+[5] : This assessment also applies to marxist revolution more generally.
Moreover, the EA movement could learn from the mistakes of communism. A point of reference which I’ve personally found enlightening is be _The Revolution, Betrayed_, by Trotsky.
-\[6\] If one attends [EA Global](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/16/fear-and-loathing-at-effective-altruism-global-2017/), one does not get the impression that EAs, after they put down their vegetarian cocktails, will go on to the streets and sing [_The Internationale_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8EMx7Y16Vo). Perhaps they’re missing out.
\ No newline at end of file
+[6] : If one attends [EA Global](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/16/fear-and-loathing-at-effective-altruism-global-2017/), one does not get the impression that EAs, after they put down their vegetarian cocktails, will go on to the streets and sing [_The Internationale_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8EMx7Y16Vo). Perhaps they’re missing out.
+
+
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/blog/2022/10/17/the-commons/index.md b/blog/2022/10/17/the-commons/index.md
index f21ca0b..6fb4ed6 100644
--- a/blog/2022/10/17/the-commons/index.md
+++ b/blog/2022/10/17/the-commons/index.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
Sometimes you give to the commons, and sometimes you take from the commons
==========================================================================
-Sometimes you give to the commons, and sometimes you trade from the commons. And through this giving and taking, people are able to smooth consumption. This is good because getting more ressources from the commons when you temporarily have fewer of them is more positive than giving ressources away when you temporarily have more of them. Engraving depicting the curse of [Tantalus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus)
+Sometimes you give to the commons, and sometimes you take from the commons. And through this giving and taking, people are able to smooth consumption. This is good because getting more ressources from the commons when you temporarily have fewer of them is more positive than giving ressources away when you temporarily have more of them. Engraving depicting the curse of [Tantalus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus)
Anyways, a phenomenon I've noticed is that sometimes, you can only give to the commons, but you can't take from the commons. This is dysfunctional, and defeats the whole purpose of the commons.
diff --git a/blog/2023/01/03/me-in-2022/index.md b/blog/2023/01/.03/me-in-2022/index.md
similarity index 100%
rename from blog/2023/01/03/me-in-2022/index.md
rename to blog/2023/01/.03/me-in-2022/index.md
diff --git a/blog/2023/03/10/aaron-sorkins-newsroom/index.md b/blog/2023/03/10/aaron-sorkins-newsroom/index.md
index 970350d..a03f0a9 100644
--- a/blog/2023/03/10/aaron-sorkins-newsroom/index.md
+++ b/blog/2023/03/10/aaron-sorkins-newsroom/index.md
@@ -18,6 +18,8 @@ Inspired by:
- [What Happens in The Dark Knight Rises](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/tdkr)
- [and more](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/fullarchive)
+You can subscribe to these posts [here](https://nunosempere.com/.subscribe/)
+
diff --git a/blog/2023/03/10/estimation-sanity-checks/index.md b/blog/2023/03/10/estimation-sanity-checks/index.md
index a12df99..ac02087 100644
--- a/blog/2023/03/10/estimation-sanity-checks/index.md
+++ b/blog/2023/03/10/estimation-sanity-checks/index.md
@@ -13,13 +13,15 @@ I like this so much because:
### Some examples
+Here are a few examples where I’ve found estimation to be useful for sanity-checking. I mention these because I think that the theoretical answer becomes stronger when paired with a few examples which display that dynamic in real life.
+
#### Photo Patch Foundation
The [Photo Patch Foundation](https://photopatch.org/) is an organization which has received a [small amount of funding](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/photo-patch-foundation-general-support-2019/) from Open Philanthropy:
> Photo Patch has a website and an app that allows kids with incarcerated parents to send letters and pictures to their parents in prison for free. This diminishes barriers, helps families remain in touch, and reduces the number of children who have not communicated with their parents in weeks, months, or sometimes years.
-It takes [little digging](https://donorbox.org/patching-relationships-with-letters-photos-2) to figure out that their costs are $2.5/photo. If we take the [AMF numbers at all seriously](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4Qdjkf8PatGBsBExK/adding-quantified-uncertainty-to-givewell-s-cost), it seems very likely that this is not a good deal. For example, for $2.5 you can deworm several kids in developing countries, or buy [a bit more](https://www.againstmalaria.com/DollarsPerNet.aspx) than one malaria net. Or, less intuitively, trading 0.5% chance of saving a statistical life for sending a photo to a prisoner seems like a pretty bad trade.
+It takes [little digging](https://donorbox.org/patching-relationships-with-letters-photos-2) to figure out that their costs are $2.5/photo. If we take the [AMF numbers at all seriously](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4Qdjkf8PatGBsBExK/adding-quantified-uncertainty-to-givewell-s-cost), it seems very likely that this is not a good deal. For example, for $2.5 you can deworm several kids in developing countries, or buy [a bit more](https://www.againstmalaria.com/DollarsPerNet.aspx) than one malaria net. Or, less intuitively, trading 0.05% chance of saving a statistical life for sending a photo to a prisoner seems like a pretty bad trade--0.05% of a statistical life corresponds to 0.05/100 × 70 years × 365 = 12 statistical days.
One can then do [somewhat more elaborate estimations](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h2N9qEbvQ6RHABcae/a-critical-review-of-open-philanthropy-s-bet-on-criminal) about criminal justice reform.
@@ -54,6 +56,8 @@ Occasionally, I've seen some optimistic cost-effectiveness estimates by advocate
I explained why I like estimates as sanity checks: they are useful, cheap, and very defensible. I then gave several examples of dead-simple sanity checks, and in each case pointed to more elaborate follow-up estimates.
+PS: You can subscribe to these posts [here](https://nunosempere.com/.subscribe/)
+
diff --git a/blog/2023/03/15/fit-beta/index.md b/blog/2023/03/15/fit-beta/index.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc2ed96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/blog/2023/03/15/fit-beta/index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
+Find a beta distribution that fits your desired confidence interval
+===================================================================
+
+Here is a tool for finding a beta distribution that fits your desired confidence interval.
+E.g., to find a beta distribution whose 95% confidence interval is 0.2 to 0.8,
+input 0.2, 0.8, and 0.95 in their respective fields below:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
The virtue of using a a beta distribution is that it is inherently bounded between 0 and 1,
+and thus much more suitable for estimating things like probabilities, and, more speculatively,
+ranges of values. Previously, various people in my extended social circle, including myself, had been
+using lognormals (bad, because not bounded) or truncated lognormals (better, but deeply inelegant) for
+those purposes. I hope that with this tool such practices will come to and end.
+
+You can read more about how this utility works [here](https://github.com/quantified-uncertainty/fit-beta.git).
+Advanced users will particularly enjoy the [npm package](https://www.npmjs.com/package/fit-beta).
+
+
+
diff --git a/blog/2023/03/20/estimation-in-the-horizon/index.md b/blog/2023/03/20/estimation-in-the-horizon/index.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10ded0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/blog/2023/03/20/estimation-in-the-horizon/index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+Some estimation work in the horizon
+===================================
+
+This document outlines some estimation work in altruistic estimation that seems currently doable. Some of these might be attempted by, for example, my team at the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute. But together they add up to more work than what our small team can accomplish.
+
+Two downsides of this post are that a) it looks at things that are more salient to me, and doesn't comprehensively review all estimation work being done, and b) it could use more examples.
+
+
+* Saruman in Isengard looking at an army of orcs*
+
+## Directions
+
+### Produce more specific high-value estimates
+
+The idea here is to produce more estimates in a way that results in better decisions.
+
+Some examples might be:
+
+- Produce estimates of the value of 80,000 hours' top career paths
+- Produce estimates of the value of EA organizations
+- Produce estimates of the value of past EA Funds and Open Philanthropy grants.
+- Produce estimates of the value of different research directions
+- Produce estimates of the value of different new cause areas
+
+The value of these estimates generally has two moving parts:
+
+1. Their immediate payoff in terms of affecting near-term decisions
+2. Making it easier to create future estimates of a similar kind
+
+For example, if I help someone estimate the value of various career options they are considering, that has the benefit of improving their decision about which career moves they make. But if those estimates are then posted on the EA Forum, or in some repository of models, they might make it easier for people to reuse and tweak these estimates, which would be cheaper than coming up with their own estimates anew.
+
+At QURI in particular, we might work on estimating the value of some of 80,000 hours' top career paths, building upon [the results from this contest](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hGdsgaRiF2zH3vX5M/winners-of-the-squiggle-experimentation-and-80-000-hours), because this seems like a somewhat ambitious type of estimation that would produce useful templates and allow us to explore new strategies. And I personally expect to produce a few such estimates this year.
+
+### Explore different types of estimates
+
+At QURI, we have been experimenting mainly with two broad classes of estimation:
+
+- End-to-end estimation, where the final estimate is a quantity like QALYs, existential risk reduced, that we care more or less directly about.
+- Relative value estimation, where we don't estimate and endline quality, but rather how much you value some option relative to some other related option.
+
+As we do more work there, we learn and begin to implement some stuff, like:
+
+- End-to-end estimation is generally too effortful, and you can reduce that effort by making estimates more modular and reusing their parts
+- Relative value estimation is still too unwieldy, so you can do relative value estimates within a cluster, and then elicit the relative estimate between different clusters, or between representatives of each clusters.
+
+But in general, are there any ingenious types of estimates which would make estimation easier, more scalable, or doable for previously inaccessible topics?
+
+### Build estimation pipelines
+
+In [August 2020](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ze2Je5GCLBDj3nDzK/how-many-ea-billionaires-five-years-from-now), @Erich_Grunewald estimated that there was a 5-10% chance that EA would lose a billionaire in the next few years. In hindsight, this estimate seems decent. But it wasn't vetted, distributed, and incorporated into people's decisions. And although it was part of some QURI contests, it seems more like a one-off than a continuous series of estimations of importance.
+
+Instead, we could have pipelines that continuously produce estimates in a way which produces value. Some pipelines which it might be valuable to build might be:
+
+- Evaluations of the results of projects which receive funds from EA organizations. This would require figuring out what kinds of evaluations of past funding decisions would influence future funding decisions. It would also be neat to add a consent form to funding applications which would allow for more inquisitive public evaluations in the future. I think there would be value in this being a pipeline rather than a one-off evaluation of some grants, because it would allow for more lessons learnt to accumulate.
+- Adapting GiveWell's estimates to incorporate uncertainty. Although there is already some early work on this, it hasn't been incorporated into GiveWell's own estimates. It could also be updated year on year.
+- Pipelines to produce forecasts. Right now, there are various groups producing forecasts, from forecasting platforms like Metaculus and Manifold Markets, to prediction markets like Polymarket, to groups of forecasters like those at Samotsvety and the Swift Center. But these don't cover all that could be forecasted, and could produce more forecasts, sooner.
+- One very general pipeline would involve more widespread use of prediction markets. This has two challenges. One is that it's currently very legally effortful to do things legally in the US. Another challenge is that it's not clear how to structure prediction markets so that they produce value. That is, there the clear between putting a market up in Polymarket and good things happening could be made much stronger, but this requires figuring out.
+
+Here, by pipeline, I mean something distinct from a one-off, and that starts to produce value and can continue to do so. My sense is that those types of work are more valuable.
+
+### Work on the theory behind estimation
+
+Some topics which could benefit from a theoretical treatment might be:
+
+- How can we address Goodhart's law and the optimizer's curse? You can make a Bayesian adjustment, but how would it look like in practice?
+- What are the different types of estimations, and how best can we tackle them? What is the best way to divide and organize the space?
+- What are some good proper scoring rules that one can use in forecasting tournaments? This is kind of an interesting intellectual topic, but it can also be a huge time-waster.
+- Although Superforecasters do something similar to Bayesian updating, they can't be literally doing Bayesian updating (the world is too big, and their heads too small to represent all possible hypotheses). How then is the best way to approximate Bayesian updates given finite resources?
+- What can we learn by looking at the history of forecasting?
+
+The hope here would be that taking a step back and theorizing could add some clarity which could improve your day to day estimation.
+
+### Produce better estimation tooling
+
+Better tooling seems like it could lead to the production of more and better estimates, faster. For an extreme example, [here](https://github.com/NunoSempere/time-to-botec/blob/master/C/samples/samples.c) is a simple BOTEC in C (a low level estimation language), and [here](https://www.squiggle-language.com/playground#code=eNptUEFuwjAQ%2FMrKp6QykFCQUKSeSl%2BQY42QIRuIhG1kO6II8ffuxuaGDzvj8ezOyg8Rzu7WjsZofxdN9CPKSfrphuj8S%2Bmw1%2BMlfrsORSOUve41fEE13zA9THTN9EiU3z6oHpRVthtC3FdsyLwmXmcenEG6ttpcL9hinPfemS29FDVEB59l9hlt7%2B99S%2FbVVfmKCmT7TZkSUl5GzsqUx%2B2UveFwOqcOypvRxsdScl0sE6wywI7Hewz0A%2BQ2w18cPRZTnoQ8hlZ4gLJAJzmbjDKJBrVtploknRqe4vkPXHOBOQ%3D%3D) is that same estimate in Squiggle, a language for rapid estimation.
+
+Some progress in the tooling domain might involve:
+
+- Better dashboards, and ways to display estimates
+- Adding more useful functionality, like a [metalog distribution](https://github.com/quantified-uncertainty/squiggle/pull/1444), which allows for easier construction of distributions based on arbitrary confidence intervals.
+- Making tooling which is usable by more people, that could be used on mobile, or that has a more gentle learning curve
+
+One consideration for this kind of enterprise is that it can be fairly time intensive, and fairly long until you learn whether it has been worth it or not.
+
+## Who is working on this type of thing?
+
+Within or adjacent to EA:
+
+- The Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute
+- Rethink Priorities
+- The Swift Center
+- Samotsvety Forecasting
+- The Forecasting Research Institute
+- Various funders and funds
+- Manifold Markets
+- Metaculus
+- etc.
+
+Outside EA, probably too many to mention at once, but some which stand out to me are:
+
+- Startups working in the prediction market space: Polymarket, Kalshi, etc.
+- Startups or early companies working on the estimation space: Causal, Rootclaim, FiveThirtyEight, etc.
+- Large academic fields around statistics, etc.
+- Most corporations have some revenue and demand forecasting, or other [statistical software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29).
+- etc.
+
+
+
+*