The Prediction Post is a daily digest of news headlines accompanied by relevant prediction markets. The intent is to give news consumers quantitative context on the top headlines of the day. Think of it as a Bayesian's version of morning headline newsletters like CNN's 5 Things or The New York Times' The Morning.
See the full back catalog at the link above. Each newsletter covers at least one headline across six different categories: World, U.S., Business & Tech, Science & Health, Entertainment, and Sports.
The format:
Headline - Publication(link)
Embedded prediction market (so far exclusively from Manifold)
Brief commentary/insight about the relation between the headline and the prediction market
Sweden clears final hurdle in bid to join NATO after Hungary approves accession - CNN
We’re not out of the woods yet, says the prediction markets. From the above market’s author: “Edit 26/2/24: The Hungarian parliament has finally voted to allow Sweden to join NATO but this still needs to be ratified by the Hungarian President, and that position is currently vacant. Orban could delay the naming of a new president precisely to prevent Sweden from joining, and for this reason this market is not resolved just yet.”
🇺🇸 U.S.
(From February 26th, 2024, after closing YES)
South Carolina primary: Donald Trump easily defeats Nikki Haley in her home state - BBC
Trump prevails after a low of 10% chance back in December 2022.
Recent market drops from height of ~40% on backpedaling comments from burger chain.
🧪 Science & Health
(From February 22nd, 2024, when odds were at 68%)
IM-1 ‘Odysseus’ lander on track to Moon landing on Friday morning - Cosmos
Traders still hesitant to declare victory for successful soft-landing on the moon.
📺 Entertainment
(From February 22nd, 2024, when odds were at 96%)
Is Dune 2 An All-Time Sci-Fi Masterpiece? 10 Biggest Takeaways From Glowing Reviews - Screen Rant
Reviews confirm quality of Dune sequel, matching traders’ sentiment since last summer.
🏟️ Sports
(From February 29th, 2024, when odds were at 2%)
🏎️ Christian Horner cleared of misconduct by Red Bull Racing parent company - The Washington Post
Odds of Red Bull team principal resigning fall from ~40% on news.
FAQs
How are headlines and related prediction markets chosen?
Each day I browse Google News to find at least one news headline from each category (World, U.S., Business & Tech, Science & Health, Entertainment, Sports) and then search Manifold for a matching prediction market that provides additional insight, context, or truth about the news item.
There are often many news outlets reporting on the same story, so I'll cherry pick the publication providing a headline that best contrasts with or matches the prediction market.
Why are all the prediction markets from Manifold and not Metaculus, PredictIt, Polymarket, GJ Open, Kalshi, or elsewhere?
I'm most active on Manifold, they have the widest variety of markets (decreasing the amount of time I have to search for one that matches my chosen news headline), and their markets embed natively into Substack posts.
Metaculus questions embed natively into Substack too, so I may include them in the future if I can't find a relevant one on Manifold.
PredictIt, Polymarket, GJ Open, and Kalshi markets don't seem to embed natively in Substack posts, but I'd consider using them in the future if they did.
How often is The Prediction Post published?
The Prediction Post is currently a daily newsletter sent every morning around 7am Eastern, though sometimes I take a day off here or there depending on personal obligations.
Is The Prediction Post a serious project?
I'm a longtime forecasting and prediction market hobbyist and advocate, so this is a bit of a passion project for me while I'm on leave from work for a few months, with no current plans to monetize.
If you are interested in being a contributor (i.e. being responsible for a given day(s) each week), let's chat! No experience needed. Currently my process takes 30-60 minutes per day. As such, I'm very keen on divvying up the work to make this a bit more manageable to continue long-term, especially when I return to work full time. If you're interested in getting involved, simply reply via email to any edition of The Prediction Post and follow up if you don't hear from me after a few days.
What inspired The Prediction Post?
For years I feel like I've heard requests for a forecasting/prediction market-based newspaper/media source (I tried to find tangible evidence of this but nothing came up in a quick search). This is my minimal-effort take on that idea. I was also inspired by the great work done on The Base Rate Times by @vandemonian. 🍻
I have other questions/feedback...
Great! Drop a comment here, reply via email to any edition of The Prediction Post, or send me a message on Manifold.
[Cross-posted from my Substack here]
If you spend time with people trying to change the world, you’ll come to an interesting conundrum: Various advocacy groups reference previous successful social movements as to why their chosen strategy is the most important one. Yet, these groups often follow wildly different strategies from each other to achieve social change. So, which one of them is right?
The answer is all of them and none of them.
This is because many people use research and historical movements to justify their pre-existing beliefs about how social change happens. Simply, you can find a case study to fit most plausible theories of how social change happens. For example, the groups might say:
* Repeated nonviolent disruption is the key to social change, citing the Freedom Riders from the civil rights Movement or Act Up! from the gay rights movement.
* Technological progress is what drives improvements in the human condition if you consider the development of the contraceptive pill funded by Katharine McCormick.
* Organising and base-building is how change happens, as inspired by Ella Baker, the NAACP or Cesar Chavez from the United Workers Movement.
* Insider advocacy is the real secret of social movements – look no further than how influential the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was in passing the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 & 1964.
* Democratic participation is the backbone of social change – just look at how Ireland lifted a ban on abortion via a Citizen’s Assembly.
* And so on…
To paint this picture, we can see this in action below:
Source: Just Stop Oil which focuses on…civil resistance and disruption
Source: The Civic Power Fund which focuses on… local organising
What do we take away from all this? In my mind, a few key things:
1. Many different approaches have worked in changing the world so we should be humble and not assume we are doing The Most Important Thing
2. The case studies we focus on are likely confirmation bias, where
I speak to many entrepreneurial people trying to do a large amount of good by starting a nonprofit organisation. I think this is often an error for four main reasons.
1. Scalability
2. Capital counterfactuals
3. Standards
4. Learning potential
5. Earning to give potential
These arguments are most applicable to starting high-growth organisations, such as startups.[1]
Scalability
There is a lot of capital available for startups, and established mechanisms exist to continue raising funds if the ROI appears high. It seems extremely difficult to operate a nonprofit with a budget of more than $30M per year (e.g., with approximately 150 people), but this is not particularly unusual for for-profit organisations.
Capital Counterfactuals
I generally believe that value-aligned funders are spending their money reasonably well, while for-profit investors are spending theirs extremely poorly (on altruistic grounds). If you can redirect that funding towards high-altruism value work, you could potentially create a much larger delta between your use of funding and the counterfactual of someone else receiving those funds. You also won’t be reliant on constantly convincing donors to give you money, once you’re generating revenue.
Standards
Nonprofits have significantly weaker feedback mechanisms compared to for-profits. They are often difficult to evaluate and lack a natural kill function. Few people are going to complain that you provided bad service when it didn’t cost them anything. Most nonprofits are not very ambitious, despite having large moral ambitions. It’s challenging to find talented people willing to accept a substantial pay cut to work with you. For-profits are considerably more likely to create something that people actually want.
Learning Potential
Most people should be trying to put themselves in a better position to do useful work later on. People often report learning a great deal from working at high-growth companies, building interesting connection
TL;DR
Exactly one year after receiving our seed funding upon completion of the Charity Entrepreneurship program, we (Miri and Evan) look back on our first year of operations, discuss our plans for the future, and launch our fundraising for our Year 2 budget.
Family Planning could be one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available. Reducing unintended pregnancies lowers maternal mortality, decreases rates of unsafe abortions, and reduces maternal morbidity. Increasing the interval between births lowers under-five mortality. Allowing women to control their reproductive health leads to improved education and a significant increase in their income. Many excellent organisations have laid out the case for Family Planning, most recently GiveWell.[1]
In many low and middle income countries, many women who want to delay or prevent their next pregnancy can not access contraceptives due to poor supply chains and high costs. Access to Medicines Initiative (AMI) was incubated by Ambitious Impact’s Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program in 2024 with the goal of increasing the availability of contraceptives and other essential medicines.[2]
The Problem
Maternal mortality is a serious problem in Nigeria. Globally, almost 28.5% of all maternal deaths occur in Nigeria. This is driven by Nigeria’s staggeringly high maternal mortality rate of 1,047 deaths per 100,000 live births, the third highest in the world. To illustrate the magnitude, for the U.K., this number is 8 deaths per 100,000 live births.
While there are many contributing factors, 29% of pregnancies in Nigeria are unintended. 6 out of 10 women of reproductive age in Nigeria have an unmet need for contraception, and fulfilling these needs would likely prevent almost 11,000 maternal deaths per year.
Additionally, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that every dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would reduce the cost of pregnancy-related and newborn care by three do
