Metaculus Inc.
Metaculus front page
Type of businessPrivate
Available inEnglish
Founded2015 (2015)
HeadquartersSanta Cruz, California, United States
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)
CEOGaia Dempsey
Employees
  • 25 (2023)
URLmetaculus.com
RegistrationOptional
Current statusActive

Metaculus is an American reputation-based, massive online prediction solicitation and aggregation engine.[1] One of the focuses of Metaculus is predicting the timing, nature and impact of scientific and technological advances and breakthroughs.[2][3]

Reward system

Three types of predictions can be made: probability predictions to binary questions that resolve as either 'yes' or 'no', numerical-range predictions, and date-range predictions.[2] Users can contribute to the community prediction for any given question, leave comments and discuss prediction strategies with other users.[4] Users can suggest new questions which, after moderation, will be opened to the community.[4]

Users can earn points for successful predictions (or lose points for unsuccessful predictions), and track their own predictive progress.[4] The scoring awards points both for being right and for being more right than the community.[5]

In January 2020, Metaculus introduced the Bentham Prize, which awards bi-weekly monetary prizes of $300, $200 and $100 to the first, second and third most valuable user contributions.[6] The following month, Metaculus introduced the Li Wenliang prize, which awards a number of different monetary prizes to questions, forecasts and analyses related to the COVID-19 outbreak.[7]

History

Data scientist Max Wainwright and physicists Greg Laughlin and Anthony Aguirre launched the site in 2015.[2][4]

In June 2017, the Metaculus Prediction was launched, which is a system for aggregating user predictions.[8] The Metaculus Prediction, on average, outperforms the median of the community's predictions when evaluated using the Brier or Log scoring rules.[9]

In 2021, Metaculus received an Effective altruism infrastructure fund grant worth $300k.[10] In 2022, Metaculus received a $5.5m grant from Open Philanthropy.[11] In October 2022, Metaculus received $20k funding from the FTX future fund, 3 weeks before the bankruptcy of FTX.[12]

See also

References

  1. Predicting the Future (of Life), in Future of Life Institute published January 24, 2016 retrieved March 16, 2019
  2. 1 2 3 The power of prediction markets, in Nature, published December 17th, 2018 retrieved March 16, 2019
  3. This Site Keeps Track of Elon Musk’s Predictions About The Future, in Futurism published March 10, 2016 retrieved March 16, 2019
  4. 1 2 3 4 Metaculus: a prediction website with an eye on science and technology, in YaleNews published November 2, 2016 retrieved March 16, 2019
  5. Metaculus FAQ
  6. Besiroglu, Tamay (January 15, 2020). "The Bentham prize". Metaculus. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  7. Besiroglu, Tamay (February 13, 2020). "The Li Wenliang prize series for forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak". Metaculus. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  8. "What is the Metaculus Prediction?". Metaculus (FAQ). Archived from the original on 2022-11-10. Retrieved 2022-11-13. ... the Metaculus Prediction uses a sophisticated model to calibrate and weight each user
  9. Forecasting the Future: Can The Hive Mind Let Us Predict the Future?, in Futurism, published September 16th 2016, retrieved March 16, 2019
  10. "May-August 2021: EA Infrastructure Fund Grants". Effective Altruism Funds. Retrieved 2023-05-14.
  11. Metaculus (2022-07-28). "Metaculus Awarded $5.5M Grant to Advance Forecasting as a Public Good". Medium. Retrieved 2023-05-14.
  12. Metaculus (2022-10-12). "Metaculus Launches the 'Forecasting Our World In Data' Project to Probe the Long-Term Future". Medium. Retrieved 2023-05-14.
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