Superforecasters®, Super Forecasters, and Pro Forecasters…Oh My!
Is it Superforecaster® or Super Forecaster?
Superforecasters® were a “surprise discovery” of the Good Judgment Project (GJP). This was the major research-and-development project that preceded Good Judgment Inc. The Good Judgment Project received a massive sponsorship from the U.S. government to conduct a four-year geoplitical geopolitical forecasting tournament, ACE. Because Good Judgement discovered superforecasters, they registered the trademare. Thus the “circle-R” any time you see it as one word.
That means, essentially, the only difference between a superforecaster® and a super forecaster is one of affilation with Good Judgment.
More About the Good Judgment Project
Good Judgment founder Phil Tetlock explains the “why” behind the project in his bestselling book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. “We set up GJP as a controlled experiment with random assignment of participants,” Tetlock writes. “Results from the first year of the tournament established that teaming and training could boost forecasting accuracy.”
Initial research divided participants into randomly assigned groups. After the initial research was completed, researchers selected only the best forecasters from each of the randomized groups–choosing from the top 2%. This helped mitigate any advantages forecasters had due to teams or training. But quantity also mattered, as Tetlock explains.
“To minimize the chance that outstanding accuracy resulted from luck rather than skill, we limited eligibility for GJP superforecaster status to those forecasters who participated in at least 50 forecasting questions during a tournament ‘season,” he writes.
When the IARPA ACE Program ended, the results were clear. Super forecasting wasn’t a fluke. It was a very real skill. Further research would show it was a teachable, refinable skill.
You don’t have to be a superforecaster® to be a super forecaster
In the years since the conclusion of the ACE Program, Good Judgment Inc has continued hosting public tournaments at Good Judgment Open. The annual competition runs in the Fall, and Good Judgment uses the results of the tournament to identify potential superforecasters®. BestWorld Chief Scientist Dawna Coutant and President Carolyn Meinel are both official superforecasters®. But….
In addition to being superforecasters® with Good Judgment, both Dawna and Carolyn are officially designated Pro Forecasters. This designation is awarded by the management of INFER, a forecasting project of RAND.
INFER (INtegrated Forecasting and Estimates of Risk) relies on crowd-sourced forecasting to generate early-warning signals about matters of global importance. INFER forecasters look for early warning signs and signals in the complex world of geopolitics. These are the same signals policy makers and world leaders look to in order to determine the course they will take–and the course of history in the process. INFER and its forecasters operate with an ecosystem of forecasting platforms. These platforms aggregate myriad perspectives of the global network of forecasters, both inside and outside of the U.S. Government.
As with BestWorld, INFER relies on technology to make all of this happen. Cultivate Labs is a supporter of RAND’s INFER project.
BestWorld Exists to Make You a Super Forecaster
In the very near future, BestWorld will embark on its initial project–an effort to combine on-the-ground journalism, bleeding-edge AI, and forecasting to create a new paradigm for journalism and, eventually, social media. We invite you to sign up for our newsletter or join BestWorld as our next volunteer.
In the meantime, you don’t have to wait to become a forecaster in your own right. Both Good Judgment and INFER are looking for people just like you. Follow the links below to find out how you can become a superforecaster® with Good Judgment or a RAND-designated Pro Forecaster.
Become a Superforecaster®
Become a Pro Forecaster
