https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9613/explainable-ai-and-trust-issues/ AI researchers exploring ways to increase trust in AI recognize that one barrier to trust, often, is a lack of explanation. This recognition has led to the development of the field of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). In their paper Formalizing Trust in Artificial In…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/8701/the-path-to-controlling-cancer/ Treating cancer is a battle against exponential growth of mutating cells, so even breakthrough drugs may offer only incremental increases in survival time before residual tumors rebound. But as we learn more about the fundamental mechanisms of cancer, we can target those proce…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/8702/the-promise-and-impact-of-the-next-generation-of-weight-loss-drugs/ Obesity is a burden on individuals and on society, but it has historically been hard to treat. Until recently, weight loss approaches based on diet/lifestyle and drugs struggled to produce safe and sustainable weight loss of greater than 5% …

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9191/methods-for-solving-protein-structures/ Proteins are complex molecules that comprise the bulk of functional parts of living things. They are encoded in DNA and RNA as genes. By sequencing DNA, or sometimes even the proteins themselves, we can learn the amino acid sequence that makes up a protein. But the way…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/8739/population-crashes-the-deadliest-events-in-history/ Throughout history, for most of the time, world population has been growing, with the rate of that growth also increasing along with the transitions between the foraging era, the farming era, and the industrial era. While declines in the population of speci…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/8807/reducing-nuclear-risk-through-improved-us-china-relations/ Heightened geopolitical tensions can increase the risk of war, and when tensions between nuclear powers deteriorate the risk of nuclear war can increase. One such relationship facing heightened tensions is between the United States and China. This is…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10685/malaria-and-the-historic-rtss-vaccine/ The following essay was contributed by public health researcher Jon Servello. This essay makes extensive use of abbreviations. The list can be found here. Malaria caused 627,000 deaths in 2020, largely among children under five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. Inter…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/8938/solar-power-current-challenges-encouraging-progress/ The world is hugely reliant on fossil fuels. Despite impressive progress in the development of renewable energy, still about 85% of the world’s energy comes from oil, gas, and coal. The progress in recent years has meant that the worst-case climate outcome…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9247/polygenic-selection-of-embryos/ In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a fertilization procedure in which ova are removed from a woman and combined with sperm in a laboratory culture, with the resulting embryo then implanted in the woman’s or a surrogate mother's uterus. This assistive reproductive technology has b…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10188/biosecurity-vulnerabilities-of-american-food-supply/ In the early summer of 1968, farmers in Louisiana noticed small, elongated brown lesions running down green leaves of corn. These plants quickly died or experienced extensive rot that rendered the vegetable inedible. By 1970, these symptoms could be seen …

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/11200/war-of-attrition-updated-endgame-forecasts-for-the-ukraine-russia-conflict/ Robert de Neufville is a superforecaster and former Director of Communications of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. He writes and forecasts at Telling the Future. Russia appears to have counted on a quick, decisive victory in …

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9527/will-the-great-resignation-spread/ In 2021 there were many stories about workers quitting jobs. Pundits dubbed this phenomenon the Great Resignation. Statistically, the best measure of quits in the United States comes from the government's Job Openings and Labor Market Survey, or JOLTS. As of this writing, t…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/8339/life-on-the-icy-moons-and-ocean-worlds-of-the-outer-solar-system/ The following essay was contributed by space systems engineer Kostas Konstantinidis The search for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the driving forces behind space exploration. Its discovery would be one of the great scientific discove…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9826/renewables-forecasting/ Published by RyanBeck on Feb 14, 2022. In a recent article about solar power, Tom Chivers described how growth in solar power has outpaced many forecasts, as well as the challenges involved in accurately forecasting trends in solar power. Making accurate forecasts about the future of …

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9885/action-ontologies-computer-ontologies/ The following essay is by Jacob Falkovich who writes at Putanumonit.com The mystery of perception Out in the universe, there are merely atoms¹ and the void. On the table in front of you, there’s a ripe tomato. Inside your skull is a brain, a collection of neurons that h…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/9828/competing-institutional-solutions-to-housing-supply-restrictions/ n the last few years, increasing numbers of people across the political spectrum and across the developed world have begun to recognize the effects of restrictive housing rules on high housing prices in many global cities. In these cities, the…

Robert de Neufville is a superforecaster and former Director of Communications of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. He writes a Substack on forecasting called Telling the Future.

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10164/monetary-policy-in-2050/ There is a broad consensus that monetary policies set by central banks like the Federal Reserve or European Central Bank are critical to avoiding depressions like the global Great Recession, and for ensuring that real economic shocks like COVID-19 do not have unnecessarily harmful e…

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10025/space-debris-and-the-kessler-syndrome/ The following essay was contributed by space systems engineer Kostas Konstantinidis

https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10439/russia-ukraine-conflict-forecasting-nuclear-risk-in-2022/