Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute
QURI is a nonprofit research organization researching forecasting and epistemics to improve the long-term future of humanity.
Eli and Ozzie: Is Forecasting a Promising EA Cause Area?
Podcast Link There was recently a lengthy thread on the EA Forum about the value of forecasting as a potential cause area, between Eli Lifland and myself. We thought it would be interesting to expand on this in a podcast episode. Some Summary Points * Open Phil's expanded forecasting
Distinctions when Discussing Utility Functions
Epistemic Status: Early. The categories mentioned come mostly from experience and reflection, as opposed to existing literature. On its surface, a utility function is an incredibly simple and generic concept. An agent has a set of choices with some numeric preferences over them. This can be Von Neumann–Morgenstern (VNM)
Substack -> Ghost
We're leaving Substack in favor of Ghost, in order to get better customization. All of our previous Substack members have been migrated over. We're also using this new setup as our new website homepage. One benefit for subscribers is that this gives more control over subscriptions.
New Squiggle Workshops this Wednesday and Saturday
We’ve been busy coding Squiggle these last few months, but this week we’ll have 2 workshops in the East Bay. There are a lot of people around for EAG, so it seemed like a good time. Wednesday We’re hosting an intimate person Introduction to Squiggle workshop at
Squiggle 0.8.6 -> 0.9.2
Tags, decorators, UI updates, and major documentation improvements
Squiggle 0.8.6
Calculators, and standard library improvements, and experimental imports
Updates: Manifest Presentation, Squiggle Workshop this Thursday
First, my presentation from Manifest 2023 is now on YouTube. Enjoy! Second, I’m holding a intimate Squiggle Introduction Workshop in Berkeley this Thursday, at FAR Labs. Come and practice estimating things you care about. Sorry for the lack of other updates recently. Slava and I have been focused on
QURI-related Questions, on Manifold Markets
Recently, I’ve experimented with writing questions on Manifold. I find this the most accessible forecasting platform to ask questions quickly. Many of these questions can be better asked and resolved, but I think doing miniature versions is often better than waiting for polished versions. Questions can always be improved
Open Technical Challenges around Probabilistic Programs and Javascript
While working on Squiggle, we’ve encountered many technical challenges in writing probabilistic functionality with Javascript. Some of these challenges are solved in Python and must be ported over, and some apply to all languages. We think the following tasks could be good fits for others to tackle. These are
Using Points to Rate Different Kinds of Evidence
There’s a lot of discussion on the EA Forum and LessWrong about epistemics, evidence, and updating. I don’t know of many attempts at formalizing our thinking here into concrete tables or equations. Here is one (very rough and simplistic) attempt. I’d be excited to see much better
Squiggle 0.8.4
Private Models and UI improvements
Announcing Squiggle Hub
A free new platform for writing and sharing Squiggle code
