Pivotal Questions · Working page
Animal Futures forecasting question bank
A reviewable inventory of questions already in the Metaculus Animal Futures Tournament, related forecasts, remaining proposals, and possible next questions. Filter the list, assign priorities, and record feedback in place.
Tournament membership rechecked August 24, 2026. The 16 rows marked “Tournament” match the 16 question IDs on the live Animal Futures Tournament page. Other rows are separately marked as a near-variant, a related-topic question, or as having no close tournament match. The “Cleaned up” tab remains the source for proposal notes. Six additional candidate questions were drafted by Sol (OpenAI) from the linked material; they are labeled as such and were not found verbatim in the supplied sources.
Consolidated inventory
Review and prioritize the question bank
The opening priority values are a suggested first pass, not settled rankings. Reinstein ratings and comments are mirrored from the collaborative Sheet as a dated review snapshot. Expand any row to see the full comment, the spreadsheet’s decision and operationalization notes, and fields for your own review.
How to read “Origin.” “Source-Sheet proposal” means the question comes from the supplied “Cleaned up” tab. “Implemented on Metaculus” and “Existing Unjournal forecast” point to already-hosted questions. “Sol-drafted variant” means Sol wrote a new forecastable version by inference from the named material; it is not a quotation or pre-existing proposal.
Your inputs are private to this browser. They are saved locally on this device, not written back to Google Sheets. Export a CSV when you want to share or merge the review.
Inline comments are welcome. Highlight any question or note and use the Hypothes.is sidebar at the top right to leave a public annotation, correction, or alternative operationalization. For structured prioritization and longer feedback, use the parallel Google Sheet.
| Priority | Status | Category | Question | Origin | Decision context | Reinstein review | Review |
|---|
Selection screen
What should make the next cut?
A pivotal research question can be important without being a good tournament question. These six checks are a quick screen before investing in detailed wording.
Would a different forecast plausibly change a funding, research, policy, or advocacy choice?
Can a named public source answer the question without relying on the question author’s judgment?
Prefer outcomes that resolve, or at least produce an informative checkpoint, within roughly one to two years.
A reasonably informed general forecaster should understand what is being asked and find usable evidence.
Avoid questions that are already nearly certain, depend mainly on obscure private information, or ask for an unobservable counterfactual.
Define the population, geography, time window, units, and baseline list before the question opens.
Provenance
Sources brought together here
The main gain from this page is avoiding parallel lists that drift apart. Links in this section are inputs to the inventory, not necessarily the source of every displayed wording. Each row’s Origin field gives the more specific trail.
- Animal Futures Tournament — current live titles and question links
- Animal-focused tournament questions: “Cleaned up” tab — canonical proposal, decision, operationalization, resolution, and action notes used in the table
- Additional August 2026 working Sheet — overlapping pre-publication list checked during reconciliation
- Unjournal tournament page — public background and participation route
- Animal welfare and alt-protein cruxes — wider research uncertainties
- Plant-based substitution beliefs — operational questions and related Metaculus forecast
- Specific Pivotal Questions and Metaculus questions — broader operationalization work
- Public Pivotal Questions database — parent question inventory
- Metaculus question-writing guidance — publication and resolution standards