[0] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?status=open&has_group=f...
Even if there is a catastrophic failure that destroys the launch tower, they are building another and will still likely get 2-3 attempts.
Should be much more accurate than a simple poll, because people with the belief that the odds are undervalued will put money in the game to hopefully profit off their belief
It's more like the Efficient Market Hypothesis
This is why you see a somewhat absurd skew on AI doom/safety questions, using Metaculus is a hobby of the cult^H^H^H^H movement, and no one's swooping in to steal their money because there isn't any.
RAMS engineers do a bottom up analysis. However, it is fairly typical for the to be subtlety biased in a way that changes the final answer. (Usually by ‘rounding up’ on individual hazards).
Top down takes an outside view and says ‘this looks like these other past projects. It should land in around the same place.’
I’ve found top down tends to be more accurate project wise. Bottom up more accurate for specific subsystems.
But everyone assumes it means something because it's an average of a bunch of people making it up.
Anyway, I dunno. I also don't believe that people predict well even with incentives, and think the whole thing is a farce, so I'm just a pretty dogged skeptic.