This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. Also:

1: Updates on the 2023 Forecasting Contest:

  • A commenter is working on a way to show everyone their score. I’ll either have this available by next Open Thread or give you an update.

  • Correction: I said the average commenter did worse than 50%. This was wrong or at least unclear (thanks Javier and Eric). The median commenter did better; the mean did worse.

  • If prize winners don’t contact me by next week, I’ll donate their prize money to the #5 particpant’s charity.

  • Jordan Breffle has done some more analyses and turned them into an interactive app here.

2: Comment of the week - peorths_roses on the subreddit on race and lived experience:

I have Roma heritage on one side, and this has become such an issue that to become a member of our country based online group you have to submit your family tree and your genetic testing results. Language doesn’t always work because not all Roma speak the same languages or even the same Sanskrit derived language. For various historical reasons my family only spoke Hungarian. It sounds a bit much but we had too many people wanting to join to add credibility to their wiccan side business or because they wanted to spice up their fanfiction about werewolves.

More at the link. The rest of the thread on Roma and (vs?) other caravan-using peoples is fascinating too.

3: Is your life too easy? Do you ever sit in your garden, enjoying the fresh air, thinking “man, I hate this, if only I was forced to defend a massive attack surface full of uncooperative weirdos, against bad-faith attacks by powerful institutions, while a peanut gallery nitpicks every single word I say”? You’re in luck - the Center for Effective Altruism has asked me to signal-boost that they’re looking for a new head of communications. Remote position, salary depends on location but up to mid-$100,000s.