I have a doc on my computer with some notes on Metaculus questions that I want to see, but either haven't gotten around to writing up yet, or am not sure how to operationalize. Feel free to take any of them.

Giving now vs. later parameter values

• "In 2030, I personally will either donate at least 10% of my income to an EA cause or will work directly on an EA cause full time"
  • attempting to measure value drift
  • or maybe ask about Jeff Kaufman or somebody like that because he's public about his donations
    • or make a list of people, and ask how many of them will fulfill the above criteria
• "According to the EA Survey, what percent of people who donated at least 10% in 2018 will donate at least 10% in 2023?"
  • Not sure if it's possible to derive this info
  • According to David Moss in Rethink Priorities Slack, it's probably not feasible to get data on this
• "When will the Founders Pledge's long-term investment fund make its last grant?"
  • https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8vfadjWWMDaZsqghq/long-term-investment-fund-at-founders-pledge
  • because its investments run out, value drift, or expropriation
  • Have they actually established this fund yet?
• "When the long-term investment fund run by Founders Pledge ceases to make grants, will it happen because the fund is seized by an outside actor?"
  • by a government, etc.
• "When will the longest-lived foundation or DAF owned by an EA make its last grant?"
  • EA defined as someone who identifies as an EA as of this prediction
  • the DAF must already exist and contain nonzero dollars
• question about Rockefeller/Ford/Gates foundation longevity
• best achievable QALYs per dollar in 2030 according to ACE, etc.
• "Will the US stock market close by 2120?"
  • A stock market is considered to have closed if all public exchanges cease trading for at least one year
  • Could also ask about any developed market, but I think it makes most sense to ask about a single country

Open research questions

• "By 2040, there will be a broadly accepted answer on how to construct a rank ordering of possible worlds where some of the worlds have a nonzero probability of containing infinite utility."

  • "broadly accepted" doesn't mean everyone agrees with its prescriptions, but at least people agree that it's internally consistent and largely aligns with intuitions on finite-utility cases

• "In 2121, it will be broadly agreed that, all things considered, donations to GiveDirectly were net positive."

  • attempt at addressing cluelessness
  • "broadly agreed" is hard to define in a useful way. it's already broadly agreed right now, in spite of cluelessness
    • maybe "broadly agreed among philosophers who have written about cluelessness" but this might limit your sample to like 4 people

• "By 2040, there will be a broadly accepted answer on what prior to use for the lifespan of humanity." see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XXLf6FmWujkxna3E6/are-we-living-at-the-most-influential-time-in-history-1

  • alternate formulation: Toby Ord and Will MacAskill both agree (to some level of confidence) on the correct prior

• "By 3020, a macroscopic object will be observed traveling faster than the speed of light."

  • relevant to Beyond Astronomical Waste

Finance

• "What annual real return will be realized by the Good Ventures investment portfolio 2022-2031?"
  • Can be calculated by Form 990-PF, Schedule B, Part II, which gives the gain of any assets held
  • Might make more sense to look at Dustin Moskowitz's net worth
    • But that doesn't account for spending
• "Will the momentum factor have a positive return in the United States 2022-2031?"
  • Fama/French 12-2 momentum over a total market index
  • As measured by "Momentum Factor (Mom)" on Ken French Data Library
  • Gross of costs
• "Will the Fama-French value factor (using E/P) be positive in the United States 2022-2031?"
  • Fama-French value over a total market index (not S&P 500), measured with E/P, not B/P
  • French "Portfolios Formed on Earnings/Price"
  • Factor is considered positive if the low 30% portfolio (equal-weighted) outperforms the high 30% portfolio.
  • E/P chosen due to being less subject to company structure than B/P
• "What annualized real return will be obtained by the top decile of momentum stocks in the United States 2022-2031?"
  • same definitions as previous question
• "What will be the magnitude of the S&P 500's largest drawdown 2022-2031?"
  • magnitude = percent decline from peak to trough

This sounds like a cool idea, thanks for doing it! 

One place where you could find a bunch of ideas is my Database of existential risk estimates (context here). It could be interesting to put very similar questions/statements on Metaculus and see how their forecasts differ from the estimates given by these individuals/papers (most of whom don't have any known forecasting track record). It could also be interesting to put on Metaculus: 

• questions inspired by (but different from) the statements in that database
• questions inspired by what you notice there aren't any statements on
  • e.g., neglected categories of risks, or risks where there are very long time-scale estimates but nothing for the next few decades
    • I think authoritarianism and dystopias are examples of that
• questions that could serve as somewhat nearer-term, less extreme proxies of later catastrophes

On the other hand, forecasting existential risks (or similar things) introduces other challenges aside from being (usually) long-range. So this might not be the ideal approach for your specific goals - not sure.

(This is a somewhat lazy response, since I'm just pointing in a direction rather than giving specifics, but maybe it could still be helpful.)

Great initiative! Are you still taking questions?

I'd also love for someone to turn a bunch of questions from my draft Politics, Policy, and Security from a Broad Longtermist Perspective: A Preliminary Research Agenda into forecasting questions, and many would most naturally have horizons of >5 years. 

This comment is again asking you to do most of the work, in the form of picking out which questions in that agenda are about the future and then operationalising them into crisp forecasting questions. But I'll add as replies a sample of some questions from the agenda that I think it'd be cool to operationalise and put on Metaculus.