The hottest Forecasting Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Business Topics

Astera Labs IPO - The Next Connectivity Superhero or Steamrolled By Competition?

SemiAnalysis • 5354 implied HN points • 17 Mar 24
💼 Business Technology Finance Competition Market Analysis Forecasting
  1. Astera Labs is a key player in the AI infrastructure market, supplying connectivity chips to hyperscalers, AI accelerator vendors, and system OEMs.
  2. Connectivity in the datacenter market is highly competitive, but Astera Labs has the opportunity to become a connectivity 'Superhero' by maintaining market share and expanding product lines.
  3. Astera Labs focuses on solving connectivity bottlenecks in high-speed interfaces by offering retimers to improve signal integrity, particularly targeting PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 specs.

Who Predicted 2023?

Astral Codex Ten • 8534 implied HN points • 05 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Forecasting Prediction Contest Algorithm Data Analysis
  1. The Annual Forecasting Contest on astralcodexten.com involves participants making predictions about various questions, helping to determine if one identifiable genius or aggregated mathematical predictions work best for foreseeing the future.
  2. The winners of the contest were both amateurs and seasoned forecasting veterans, showcasing a mix of skill and luck in predicting outcomes.
  3. Metaculus outperformed prediction markets, superforecasters, and the wisdom of crowds in the contest, suggesting that consistent high performance might be rare but achievable with specific methods like those used by superforecaster Ezra Karger.

Cogent Analysis

Doomberg • 7086 implied HN points • 07 Feb 24
💰 Finance Economic Analysis Forecasting Energy markets
  1. Analysts focus on continuous learning and understanding, while advocates tend to rationalize or attack inconvenient facts.
  2. Economies heavily reliant on energy resources like Russia may evade recession despite sanctions due to their unique market dynamics.
  3. US economy's short-term resilience and avoidance of recession can be attributed to various energy-related factors, such as LNG export approvals.

Mantic Monday 2/19/24

Astral Codex Ten • 4473 implied HN points • 20 Feb 24
🕹 Technology AI Prediction Markets Forecasting Blockchain
  1. AI forecasters are becoming more prevalent in prediction markets, with the potential for bots to compete against humans in forecasting events.
  2. FutureSearch.ai is a new company building an AI-based forecaster that prompts itself with various questions to estimate probabilities.
  3. The integration of AI in prediction markets like Polymarket could increase market participation and accuracy, offering a new way to predict outcomes on various topics.

Artificial Intelligence Weather Model AIFS

Open-Meteo • 843 implied HN points • 29 Feb 24
🕹 Technology AI Data Forecasting
  1. ECMWF released its cutting-edge artificial intelligence weather model AIFS as open-data, marking a significant move in the open-data weather forecasting landscape.
  2. AIFS uses Graph Neural Networks to learn complex weather patterns, showcasing superior accuracy in longer-range forecasts exceeding 5 days.
  3. While AIFS has limitations in weather variables range and interval forecasts, its open availability enables users to compare its forecasts with traditional models, offering a new perspective in weather forecasting.
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The Extinction Tournament

Astral Codex Ten • 9153 implied HN points • 20 Jul 23
🔬 Science Artificial Intelligence Forecasting Existential Risk Technology
  1. Experts and superforecasters had a strong disagreement on the likelihood of global catastrophes.
  2. The tournament explored global disaster risks, with 'Catastrophe' meaning an event killing over 10% of the population, and 'Extinction' meaning reducing human population below 5,000.
  3. The tournament highlighted the challenges in aligning expert predictions, potential biases in forecasts, and the complexities of forecasting AI-related risks.

The U.S. Economy is Roaring. Why Should Rates Come Down?

The Overshoot • 452 implied HN points • 27 Jan 24
💰 Finance Economy Interest Rates Growth Inflation Forecasting
  1. The U.S. Economy is showing strong growth and may not need rate cuts despite controlled inflation.
  2. Traders anticipate interest rates to decrease, but data suggests a period of faster growth akin to past economic booms.
  3. Initial forecasts of a U.S. recession were proven wrong, with the economy growing over 3% and showing resilience against negative predictions.

Chinese Hydropower - Large and Underappreciated

Syncretica • 648 implied HN points • 06 Nov 23
💰 Finance Energy Forecasting Economics
  1. China has the largest hydropower sector globally, with a significant impact on power generation worldwide.
  2. Hydropower output is heavily influenced by weather conditions, with recent rainfall improvements expected to boost Chinese hydropower production.
  3. The strong growth in Chinese hydropower output is likely to lead to a decrease in fossil fuel imports and a reduction in thermal power generation.

The election model is a little too popular

Silver Bulletin • 334 implied HN points • 20 Sep 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Election coverage Media influence Decision-making Forecasting Partisanship
  1. The election model became overwhelmingly popular, potentially overshadowing other content.
  2. The author is considering different strategies to manage the model's audience and impact.
  3. There are various options being considered, like putting the model behind a paywall or appealing to different types of audiences.

Reconsidering the "2020s as 1940s" Analogy

The Overshoot • 550 implied HN points • 08 Mar 23
💰 Finance Economic History Global Economy Government Response Debt crisis Forecasting
  1. The global economy faced crises in different time periods, revealing government responses can impact recovery.
  2. Excessive debts before a crisis can hinder growth post-crisis, affecting employment and national income.
  3. Governments borrowing and spending during emergencies can lead to positive outcomes, improving sectors and reducing debt burdens.

Ensemble Weather Forecast API

Open-Meteo • 351 implied HN points • 05 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Weather API Forecasting Models Documentation
  1. Ensemble weather forecasts show a range of possibilities, helping to understand the uncertainty in predictions.
  2. Weather forecasts differ in reliability based on location and weather patterns, affecting the level of uncertainty in predictions.
  3. The Ensemble API combines various weather models, providing access to different weather variables for various purposes.

Building Models to Predict the Future

Growth Croissant • 353 implied HN points • 31 Mar 23
💼 Business Forecasting Subscription Market Analysis Financial planning Business Growth
  1. Subscription business models are more predictable and easier to forecast compared to other models.
  2. A reliable forecast can provide baseline expectations for growth, shift focus to long-term revenue, and help set goals and allocate investments.
  3. Forecasting new paid subscriptions and predicting paid cancels are key components in building a forecast model for a subscription business.

Leviathan wakes

Gradient Ascendant • 16 implied HN points • 21 Feb 24
🕹 Technology AI Forecasting Generative AI Models Artificial Intelligence
  1. The author quit their job to work on a new AI-related project motivated by the transformative potential of modern AI technology.
  2. Google's Gemini 1.5 model is a significant advancement in AI capabilities, able to handle an impressive 10 million tokens for input, marking a major leap forward in AI development.
  3. Despite its imperfections, Gemini 1.5 and other advanced AI models are drastically reducing limitations and opening up new possibilities for future technological innovations.

Superforecasting the premises in “Is power-seeking AI an existential risk?”

Joe Carlsmith's Substack • 58 implied HN points • 18 Oct 23
🕹 Technology AI Forecasting Existential Risk AGI
  1. Good Judgment solicited reviews and forecasts from superforecasters on the argument for AI risk.
  2. Superforecasters placed higher probabilities on some AI risk premises and lower on others compared to the original report.
  3. Author is skeptical of heavy updates based solely on superforecaster numbers and emphasizes the importance of object-level arguments.

A Different Approach to Revenue Estimates Leveraging Alternative Data

The Data Score • 138 implied HN points • 24 May 23
💰 Finance Investment Data Analysis Market research Customer Behavior Forecasting
  1. Leveraging alternative data for revenue estimates goes beyond traditional transaction data, focusing on customer acquisition and retention insights.
  2. Applying the customer acquisition funnel framework to alternative data can help identify early trends and potential growth issues in a business.
  3. Monitoring the journey from awareness to loyalty using alternative data sets can offer valuable insights for predicting sustainable revenue growth beyond the short term.

What people are not seeing about TimeGPT

Three Data Point Thursday • 19 implied HN points • 16 Nov 23
🕹 Technology AI Data Analysis Machine Learning Forecasting
  1. Time series models, like TimeGPT, are advancing and will provide a significant boost in machine learning capabilities.
  2. Adding time as a feature in models can enhance data analysis due to the information richness of recent data.
  3. Although skepticism exists around time series machine learning models, advancements in generic models like TimeGPT are removing some barriers.

March Madness Forecasts: FiveThirtyEight vs. Betting Markets

Mike’s Blog • 78 implied HN points • 07 Apr 23
💰 Finance Data Analysis Forecasting Academic Research Sports
  1. Betting markets slightly outperformed FiveThirtyEight in predicting NBA, NFL, and MLB games.
  2. New data collected for March Madness shows both FiveThirtyEight and betting markets performed similarly, and neither significantly outperformed.
  3. Hypothesis: Both betting markets and experts may have worse accuracy in playoffs and tournaments compared to regular season games.

Forecast Scoring Methods

Abstraction • 19 implied HN points • 07 Nov 23
🔬 Science Forecasting
  1. Market-Based Platforms are good for gauging market sentiment, not individual forecasting skill
  2. Reputation-Based Platforms focus on individual performance metrics to identify top forecasters
  3. Consider the ramifications of overconfidence when selecting a scoring system for forecasting

Scoring Rules

Abstraction • 19 implied HN points • 26 Sep 23
🔬 Science Forecasting
  1. Proper scoring rules encourage honest and accurate forecasting by penalizing dishonesty and over/under-confidence.
  2. Improper scoring rules do not incentivize forecasters to report their true beliefs, leading to suboptimal forecasting incentives.
  3. In practice, proper scoring mechanisms like Brier scoring help distinguish skill from noise over multiple rounds and promote honest, calibrated forecasting.

The Insufficient Weirdness Hypothesis

Gradient Ascendant • 20 implied HN points • 01 Jun 23
🔬 Science Future AI Science fiction Artificial Intelligence Forecasting
  1. The future is consistently weirder than expected because of unknown unknowns and unusual juxtapositions.
  2. AI development and outcomes are expected to be highly weird and unpredictable, not following a smooth exponential path.
  3. Weird and unexpected scenarios are more indicative of potential future risks to consider rather than conventional outcomes.

Results for the Salem/CSPI Prediction Tournament

Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology • 11 implied HN points • 29 Aug 23
💰 Finance Forecasting Data Analysis Political Ideology
  1. The winners of the Salem/CSPI Prediction Tournament were announced, including a $25,000 prize and a fellowship
  2. The analysis of the betting markets showed mixed results, with some events being accurately predicted while others were not
  3. Participants in the tournament were mostly young, male, and had a libertarian-leaning political orientation