resolves YES if Aaron Zhang founds or co-founds a forecasting club in 2023.

aaron's a close friend of mine from debate. he was prodigiously good at debate in high school, and now he's an incoming sophomore at UCLA, majoring in politics. he asked me about OPTIC, i mentioned he could start a forecasting club at UCLA, and he expressed some interest in starting one.

some reasons for yes:

• he's looking for "something intellectually engaging in my extracurriculars" (debate did that for him in high school; nothing's filled that role in college yet)

• he's exactly the type of person i would expect to be good at + interested in forecasting

• he's a generally proficient/savvy & smart person. he knows how to navigate the world pretty well, and knows where to look when he gets lost.

• i'm personally pretty heavily incentivized to see him build a forecasting club at UCLA. starting & supporting good forecasting clubs is ~1/3 of what I do for OPTIC

• i've talked to one other person who's mentioned they're interested in starting a forecasting club at UCLA; founding a club with another person is a lot more fun + likely to succeed than founding a club by yourself. edit: this is @nmehndir (keeping the other person anonymous for now).

some reasons for no:

• he subjectively put it at ~33% (*but he might not be very calibrated — he's never done calibration games, etc.)

• (to my knowledge?) he doesn't have a ton of experience for "starting things," like clubs, companies, nonprofits, classes, etc

• he's never been involved in forecasting/epistemics/rationality/LW/EA