Clearer Thinking Regrants Forecasting Tournament

We (ClearerThinking.org) are running a regranting program, and we're partnering with Manifold Markets to run a forecasting tournament related to it with $13,000 of prizes! As part of the regranting process, we reviewed over 630 applications. We are now down to 37 finalists. Of the 37 finalists, 28 have opted in to having information about their project shared on Manifold as part of the forecasting tournament.

We anticipate providing at least some funding to about half of the projects (i.e., roughly 14 out of the 28), though this could vary significantly depending on our final assessments of the projects (which are ongoing and which we hope to complete by September 28).

We're asking you (as a forecaster on Manifold) to weigh in on these applications by:

Predicting which projects we will select to regrant any funding to, and
Making arguments or providing us with information that changes our minds about who to fund.

There will be prizes for both forecasting accuracy and for providing information that changes our minds. The total prize pool is $13,000 USD! Please note that further terms and conditions for these prizes can be found at the bottom of this page.

Click on the Markets tab to start forecasting!

Tournament Rules

$3,000: Information component

If you have an argument (e.g., about why you think a project is promising or not promising) or public information you want to share about any project, you can share it as a comment directly on the Manifold market for that project.

If you have private information, information that could harm anyone, or information where you're not sure whether it should be public or not, please send it to clearerthinkingregrants@gmail.com.

We will give $250 to each person who gives one of the top 12 arguments or pieces of information that most changes our minds regarding our funding decisions - either influencing who to fund or how much funding to provide to a project (based on our own subjective judgment of how much the provided information changed our minds)! You can feel free to submit as many arguments/pieces of information as you like, but we won't give more than 3 such awards to any one person.

$10,000: Prediction component

The other goal of this tournament is to reward individuals who do the best at predicting which grant applications we select to receive any funding from our regranting program. Our grants will be a minimum of $10,000 per project, up to a conceivable maximum of $500,000 (but what matters for the sake of the prediction component is whether we recommend to our funder that a project receive any funding at all, not how much funding we recommend be given).

Here are the rules for the prediction component of the tournament:

USD prizes will be awarded to the top 20 traders based on total profit in this group of markets:
- 1st place: $3000
- 2nd: $2000
- 3rd: $1000
- 4th: $750
- 5th: $500
- 6th-10th: $250
- 11th-20th: $150
Only one account per person can trade in this market.
Don't collude with other people to inflate your or their profits.
- For example, don't transfer money to your friend's account via betting a market artificially high/low and having them correct it.
All forms of trading are allowed (including API and limit orders).
Manifold and Clearer Thinking reserve the right to: modify rules, exclude participants, or make any other changes necessary to abide by the spirit of this tournament.

What information have applicants been asked to provide?

The 37 finalist applicants were given this form to complete, and all of them submitted it to us. For the 28 applicants who opted-in to sharing versions of their application documents on Manifold Markets, we asked them to remove any information that they did not want to be shared publicly.

How are the final projects being chosen?

We are attempting to choose the projects that we predict to have the highest expected value in terms of improving the future.

A market will resolve in favor of a project being funded if Clearer Thinking selects that project as one to provide any funding to (even if, for some reason, the project fails to receive the money - for instance, if it is shut down by the people running it before the money is received).

How did we get from >630 applications to this shortlist of finalists?

In round 1 of this selection process, more than 630 projects were each scored independently by two reviewers (who did not know the applicant personally) on four criteria:
- VALUE TO THE WORLD IF IT SUCCEEDS: if this project was successful (at its CONCRETE goals), how much value would you expect it to add to the world?
- CONFIDENCE IN THE SPECIFIC PLAN: how good do you think the team's plan is (relative to how confident we could be in any plan with this little information)?
- CONFIDENCE IN THE TEAM'S ABILITY TO EXECUTE THE PLAN: how good do you think this team will be at implementing this plan (relative to how confident we could be in any team with this little information)?
- RELEVANCE: how aligned is the goal of this project to the kinds of ideas that the FTX Future Fund (our funder for the regranting program) wants to fund? (See their areas of interest here.)
- The scores were combined by first averaging the two confidence scores (to derive an "Average confidence" score), then calculating the geometric mean of "Value," "Average confidence," and "Relevance" (i.e., the cube root of the product of the three scores).
- Each reviewer's score was converted to a z-score using that reviewer's mean and standard deviation so that each score became a measure of how well a particular project had done according to that reviewer (relative to the other projects rated by that reviewer). The z-scores were then averaged together for each pair of reviewers who reviewed that project to produce a final score for each project.
- The top 58 projects (according to these averaged scores) were selected for progression to the next round (unfortunately, there were many strong projects that could not progress to the next round).
In round 2, the top 58 projects from the last round were voted on by a group of reviewers. Votes were cast in such a way that we did not know how others were voting until after we had cast our own votes.
- Clearer Thinking narrowed the shortlist down from 58 to 39 projects based on round 2 voting (plus asking two applicants who had more than one shortlisted project to pick just one for the next round). But a further two applicants withdrew after seeing the final round process, leaving 37 applicants for the next round.
In round 3 (the current round), the 37 applicants have the choice to opt-in to being listed on Manifold or not. A total of 28 have opted in.
- Applicants who opted in to having their project listed on Manifold have deleted any information that they do not want to share publicly.

About Clearer Thinking

ClearerThinking.org conducts psychology research and creates free, interactive tools aimed at helping you make better decisions, improve your critical thinking, and better achieve your goals. We also do other projects, such as starting the Clearer Thinking podcast and running this regranting program.

General Terms and Conditions for the contest

Employees or current contractors of FTX Philanthropy and contest organizers (e.g., team members of ClearerThinking.org) are not eligible to win prizes.
Entrants and Winners must be over the age of 18.
By entering the contest, entrants agree to the Terms & Conditions.
All taxes are the responsibility of the winners.
The legality of accepting the prize in his or her country is the responsibility of the winners. Sponsor may confirm the legality of sending prize money to winners who are residents of countries outside of the United States.
Winners will be notified via a message sent to their Manifold account or email address.
Winners grant to Sponsor the right to use their name and likeness for any purpose arising out of or related to the contest. Winners also grant to Sponsor a non-exclusive royalty-free license to reprint, publish and/or use the entry for any purpose arising out of related to the contest including linking to or re-publishing the work. Any information shared with us in confidence (e.g., to our email address where confidence is requested) related to this competition will be kept confidential.
Entrants warrant that they are eligible to receive the prize money from any relevant employer or from a contract standpoint.
Entrants agree that FTX Philanthropy, ClearerThinking.org and Spark Wave shall not be liable to entrants for any type of damages that arise out of or are related to the contest and/or the prizes.
By submitting an entry, entrant represents and warrants that, consistent with the terms of the Terms and Conditions: (a) the entry is entrant’s original work; (b) entrant owns any copyright applicable to the entry; (c) the entry does not violate, in whole or in part, any existing copyright, trademark, patent or any other intellectual property right of any other person, organization or entity; (d) entrant has confirmed and is unaware of any contractual obligations entrant has which may be inconsistent with these Terms and Conditions and the rights entrant is required to have in the entry, including but not limited to any prohibitions, obligations or limitations arising from any current or former employment arrangement entrant may have; (e) entrant is not disclosing the confidential, trade secret or proprietary information of any other person or entity, including any obligation entrant may have in connection arising from any current or former employment, without authorization or a license; and (f) entrant has full power and all legal rights to submit an entry in full compliance with these Terms and Conditions.