Why we’re building Forecast
Editor’s note: this post was originally shared on Substack on October 21
Forecast launched publicly a few weeks ago. You can now download the iOS app and see all the forecasts on our website. We wanted to share a little more about what we’re trying to build.
First, a bit of background
Forecast is built around a prediction market: an exchange where people use virtual points to trade on outcomes of future events. Forecast is not the first prediction market out there, but it’s is unique in a few ways:
- Members of the community ask all the questions, which range from serious to arcane and mostly center around current events. Our team currently moderates the questions (mostly to edit them for clarity and to ensure they align with our community guidelines). Over time, we want to empower the community to self-moderate.
- Forecast uses points, rather than real money. Forecasters get points when they join and then regularly get refreshes as they play. There’s a leaderboard that tracks total point ‘profit’.
- All activity is public: anyone, whether or not they’re a forecast user, can see who participated and what their transaction/discussion history is. Forecast accounts are tied to your Facebook account behind the scenes, but users can select non-identifying display names to use in the community.
- Post-forecast discussion is incentivized. Users get points if other users support the reasons they write to explain their forecasts. Only people who have made a forecast on a particular question can write and support reasons.
Since June, the Forecast community has made more than 50,000 forecasts on a few hundred questions — and they’re actually reasonably accurate. Forecast’s midpoint brier score (measured at the midpoint between a question’s launch and resolution dates) across all closed Forecasts over the past few months is 0.204.
Why we’re building this
We became interested in prediction markets because, when they work, they help push participants to be rational, in part by inviting them to consider the difference between what they want to happen, and what they predict will happen.
Beyond the forecasts themselves, we think what makes Forecast interesting is the discussion people are having there. While sharing reasoning behind your forecast isn’t a required part of participating, it’s both highly encouraged and explicitly incentivized (you get extra forecasting points if others support your reasons). So far, the discussion in Forecast has been both thoughtful and measured. We believe that the incentive mechanic plus the lack of real money on the line plus the initially small, supportive beta community have driven this trend.
This is what got us excited about building Forecast in the first place: The idea that a forecasting frame and a few well-placed incentives could help foster more rational conversation. We believe that this frame can be particularly impactful in anchoring — and ultimately, hopefully rationalizing — discussion around contentious current events. In a period of increasing uncertainty and division, what we want most is to create a space in the world where people, especially those with divergent views, can find common ground.
Where is this going?
Our first priority is to build something that’s really fun for people who want to engage in rational debate about the future. We’ve built a small community so far and we’re focused on continuing to make it more rewarding to debate and contribute to the collective understanding of what might happen.
Beyond the participating community, we think the forecasts, debate, and analysis in the app could also be valuable to a broader audience. This could be useful both as a novel aggregator of interesting news, opinions and predictions, and as a dataset to help people understand how collective understanding of an event has changed over time.
At scale, we think that the points system in Forecast could serve as a new form of expert credentialing, both for forecasters and for the information itself. If, for example, someone makes consistently great forecasts on economic news, maybe that could give them access to extra responsibilities or distribution on economic topics. Similarly, the frequency with which a source is cited by the best forecasters could be used as one signal to determine the quality of its content.
Tell us what you think!
If you haven’t already, please join the community and tell your friends (you and they will both get extra forecasting points). The main discussions take place in our iOS app.
We’re also planning to release the full dataset (forecasts and discussion, all anonymized) next week. Send us an email if you’d like a heads up when this goes live.
We know there’s a lot that needs improving here. Please reach out with any feedback. We’re just trying to learn and make every day better in Forecast than the one before!
