Above the Fold - Manifund is here!
Manifund, Discord bot, Metaculus vs Manifold, memes and more!
Why hello there! I decided to go all out with the memes this week, so you better read through the whole thing. Several important announcements and a look at our new Discord bot!
Also, shoutout to all the amazing women who use our site, we hope you had a great international women’s day yesterday :)
Manifund
All project proposals have been submitted and many have already received 100% investment!
Take a skim through all of the interesting projects:
If this is your first time hearing about Manifund, Scott Alexander provides context here:
Announcing Forecasting Impact Mini-Grants
I’m particularly excited to see what interesting insights Jack will uncover with his plan to do more in-depth analysis of performance between different prediction market sites. Infamous users BTE and DesTiny aka Wobbles are also going to begin a podcast!?!?
If you are an accredited investor the auction phase ends on March 12th so make sure to email Austin ASAP if you want to invest (austin@manifold.markets). There are still several high-value projects that require funding.
Is Metaculus more calibrated than Manifold?
Nikos, who works at Metaculus, compared markets between the two sites and concluded that although both were well calibrated, Metaculus was significantly better on the following dataset.
Predictive Performance on Metaculus vs. Manifold Markets - EA Forum
Unfortunately, the scope of this experiment is limited by the lack of identical markets with similar engagement between the two sites. Many of the markets are relatively old as they are all sourced from an old bot on our site which used to replicate select Metaculus questions. These tended to be the most popular on Metaculus, meaning they were representative of what should be their most well-calibrated questions. However, when replicated to Manifold many didn’t receive similar interest and thus had an insignificant number of traders to give a meaningful comparison between the two sites.
This is definitely not just an excuse. We definitely aren’t competitive and unwilling to accept defeat.
Regardless, thank you Nikos for taking the time to do this awesome analysis! We will concede that Metaculus is ahead for now, but let’s see who does better for Scott’s 2023 predictions 😈
Discord bot
Ian has been creating a Discord bot that you can add to your servers to keep track of markets and bet on them!
It’s still in beta, but we would love for you to add it to your server.
Simply click this link and choose the server you want to add it to. Make sure you are admin/have permission to add bots to said server.
Please let us know what you think and if there is anything that should be changed! If you have any questions please contact Ian (Discord id: palebone#2796).
Donations are staying!
In our last newsletter, we shared the sad news that we were terminating our charity program. Alas, Stripe reversed their decision and is allowing us to continue it. Thank you so much if you are reading this and work at Stripe and argued for us.
We hope to continue using Stripe, which has been a great payment processor, and allow donations for a long time.
Dark mode is here!
Thanks Inga, our eyes are saved.
Now I can bet on Dan stock without wearing sunglasses.
Personal Calibration Scores
In essentially a single day during our hackathon, Stephen created personal calibration graphs so each user can see their performance!
Check how well calibrated you are: https://manifold.markets/my-calibration
Out of everyone’s I have seen so far N.C. Young holds the best score. Did someone say superforecaster?
The closer the score to 0 the better. You want your yes bets to be above the line, and your No bets to be below. The distance of correct bets from the line isn’t necessarily indicative of your calibration. However, having incorrect bets on the wrong side of the line does indicate a worse calibration the greater the distance.
Stephen sneakily added a section underneath that summarises all your bets in each bucket. I hadn’t even realised this existed until I went to the page for screenshots to write this! Even as an employee, things are always appearing on Manifold that I had no idea about until I randomly stumble upon them lol.
Help this good Doggo find a home
An announcement of an announcement? 👀
And thus this newsletter comes to an end.
Thanks for reading :)
David Chee