Manifest

Lead Co-Organizer

Manifest is a festival/conference on predictions, markets, and mechanisms. It’s happened twice so far, and for both of them, I’ve been one of 2-3 central organizers. If you want to get the gist without diving into the details below, I’d suggest reading some of the kind words people said about Manifest 2024.

The details:

• Nominally, the events were about prediction markets, Tetlock-style forecasting, and mechanism design — but really, they aimed at a bundle of ideas that the attendees found interesting, ranging from genetic selection in embryos to financial journalism to cultural drift to ancient philosophy. Each event was about 2.5 days, and although Manifest ‘23 hosted ~250 attendees, Manifest ‘24 more-than-doubled in size to ~600 attendees.

• Speakers included: Nate Silver, Robin Hanson, Emmett Shear, Dylan Matthews, Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Chris Best, Ben Mann, Tarek Mansour, Shayne Coplan, Zvi Mowshowitz, Byrne Hobart, Patrick McKenzie/patio11, and a lot more — you can see the full list of speakers for Manifest ‘23 and ‘24, and you can watch the talks they gave at Manifest on Youtube (‘23, ‘24).

• Sponsors for ‘23 were Kalshi, Polymarket, and Sovereign — all of the ‘23 sponsors returned for ‘24, and we added Futuresearch, Lighthaven, Metaculus, Beeminder, Futuur, and PredictIt. Manifest ‘23 was centrally hosted by Manifold, and ‘24 was cohosted by Manifold & Manifund.

• Manifest 2023 was written up by the New York Times (original, no paywall) and The Diff. For Manifest 2024, we kept a lot better track of all of the kind words people said about the event.

For more details, see manifest.is. For references, talk to Austin Chen (my boss, cofounder of Manifund, and cofounder-emeritus of Manifold) and Rachel Weinberg (co-lead of Manifest ‘24, cofounder of Manifund).