Approving this project as fitting within our charitable mission in the forecasting cause area! I've previously spoken with Marcel van Diemen before, who struck me as very motivated and entrepreneurial. I think Base Rate Times started very strong right out the gate -- it got a lot of retweets and mentions on EA/rat twitter, which is rare for a forecasting project. My major area of concern is that I'm not yet sold on whether there is repeated demand for the BRT form factor, vs just a novelty thing that gets linked to once and then not checked in the future. In any case, best of luck with BRT!

I feel that the project could be potentially valuable, and I hope Marcel will be a bit more ambitious/have a bit more runway and leeway. I feel that there could be room for more funding, but I'd want some specific commitments in exchange.

I think this is interesting and would want to hear how it's going.

@vandemonian btw you have to sign the grant agreement before you'll get the grant

Hey @vandemonian, how many views are you getting a month at the moment?

I've made Marcel an offer of $2.5k. This is not necessarily the last offer I make to this project; I'm giving a smaller amount in order to get money out the door more quickly and to provide a credible signal to other regrantors.

This grant seems fairly straightforward to evaluate. On the one hand,

• The early project looks great. I am and others are deriving value from it already.

• The way in which this project would contribute to "raising the sanity waterline" is clear (at least, on its own terms; see my distrust of this kind of thing in general below).

• Trusted members of my network are excited about the project.

• Marcel's answer to my question about scaled-down budget seems sensible. It feels like this project can absorb only partial funding fairly well.

On the other hand,

• I'm somewhat distrustful of forecasting/IIDM projects by default, because the connection between the 95th percentile version of these projects and improved outcomes has often been unclear to me. (I like Linch's post as a counterweight.) I feel this for Marcel's project too.

• I am more excited about some other projects, do definitely don't want to go all-in on this.

Overall, I'm happy to give partial funding to this project, on the substance and as a signal to others.

Even though I have a competing forecasting grant proposal, I want to state what a cool project this is and how much I've enjoyed what you've shipped so far.

I think we still have a ways to go in using prediction markets to understand contemporary events, and the project also has value in highlighting how different prediction market/forecasting platforms compare.

Hello Marcel! I've been enjoying The Base Rate Times' early coverage -- good work!

Could I ask if you have a sense of what a scaled down budget would look like? Given the large discrepancy between what you require to proceed and your goal. What would the breakdown look like at $10k, $35k, $100k?

Thank you in advance!

Full disclosure: I was given $25 by Manifund after a user experience interview. I've shamelessly decided to add it to my own project. If you think this is dodgy, please comment and I'll remove it.

I want this idea to be tested at greater scale. I think if we can build the processes here then other news orgs can use them. This seems like foundational work.

You didn't mention this, but I assume the funding is for one year?