QURI Priors
Earlier, unpublished writing from the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute, 2017 to 2026, posted as-is.
Forty-odd drafts by Ozzie Gooen that never became finished articles. Some were written during his time at the Future of Humanity Institute; most span QURI’s life, from a pre-LLM era of human forecasting platforms to recent notes on AI. As QURI winds down, they’re shared here rather than left to disappear: the priors behind years of work on quantified uncertainty, not its conclusions.
A few notes on what to expect:
- These are rough. Many are half-finished, some little more than outlines or thinking-out-loud; notes, not positions.
- Collaborators’ comments have been removed, except Nuño Sempere’s, which he kindly gave permission to keep (restored at the foot of the drafts he commented on).
- An LLM (Claude Opus) helped assemble this. It converted the source documents, organized them by theme, and wrote the per-draft summaries and completeness ratings. Anything labelled “Opus 4.8’s” is AI-written; “Ozzie Gooen’s take” is the author’s own.
- Dates are document creation dates (from Google Drive), shown atop each piece; co-authorship is noted where it applies.
39 drafts · late 2017 – early 2026 · ~71,000 words total
Most developed: Probability from a Perspective, (Re)defining Bullshit, AI Tools as Evaluators, Decentralization, Candidness, and Privacy: Pick Two, DistML: A Shorthand Language for Probability Distributions, Judgemental Predictions are Low-Signal, High-Skill, Understanding Forecasting Systems for EA Purposes
Read everything in one place: single-page HTML (good for e-readers) · plain text (good for feeding to an LLM).
Or search, sort, and filter the full set below — click any row for its summary, or use the sidebar to browse by area.
| Draft | Area | Written ↓ | Done | Words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▸Project CAIRN: A Longtermist Wiki Project | AI | Jan 2026 | ●●● | 1,504 |
| ▸Probability from a Perspective | Forecasting · Methods | Dec 2025 | ●●● | 659 |
| ▸Types of Checks | Epistemics | Aug 2025 | ●●● | 478 |
| ▸(Re)defining Bullshit | Epistemics | May 2025 | ●●● | 1,826 |
| ▸Epistemics: An Early Guide | Epistemics | May 2025 | ●●● | 2,532 |
| ▸Strongly Bounded AI: Definitions and Strategic Implications | AI | Apr 2025 | ●●● | 2,067 |
| ▸Thoughts on the Value and Motivations Behind Human Personalities | Culture | Apr 2025 | ●●● | 2,688 |
| ▸Ways to be More Cooperative in Everyday Life | Culture | Mar 2025 | ●●● | 3,317 |
| ▸AI Tools as Evaluators | AI | Jan 2025 | ●●● | 3,602 |
| ▸Accuracy Agreements | Forecasting · Methods | Apr 2023 | ●●● | 581 |
| ▸Discovery, Convenience, Presentation | EA & Eval | Nov 2022 | ●●● | 1,166 |
| ▸Intellectual Jury Duty | Forecasting · Systems | Jan 2022 | ●●● | 412 |
| ▸Different Kinds of Handcuffs | Culture | May 2021 | ●●● | 2,544 |
| ▸Decentralization, Candidness, and Privacy: Pick Two | EA & Eval | Dec 2020 | ●●● | 1,282 |
| ▸Criticize This Post | EA & Eval | Nov 2020 | ●●● | 4,628 |
| ▸Evaluations: Pros & Cons | EA & Eval | Nov 2020 | ●●● | 1,081 |
| ▸Naive, Anti-, and Mature Rationalism | Epistemics | Nov 2020 | ●●● | 514 |
| ▸A Not-Yet-Named Epistemic Story | Epistemics | Nov 2020 | ●●● | 2,608 |
| ▸Inconvenient Truths | EA & Eval | Oct 2020 | ●●● | 889 |
| ▸Association Networks | Epistemics | Oct 2020 | ●●● | 1,371 |
| ▸Justified Trust | EA & Eval | Sep 2020 | ●●● | 814 |
| ▸Inconvenient Associations | Culture | Sep 2020 | ●●● | 1,042 |
| ▸DistML: A Shorthand Language for Probability Distributions | Forecasting · Methods | Jul 2020 | ●●● | 2,994 |
| ▸Prediction Star System | Forecasting · Methods | Jun 2020 | ●●● | 1,381 |
| ▸“Forecasting Force”: Early Ideation | Forecasting · Systems | May 2020 | ●●● | 1,565 |
| ▸Thoughts on the Linguistic Etiquette of Nomenclature | Epistemics | Jan 2020 | ●●● | 654 |
| ▸Enlightened Willingness-To-Pay Forecasting Exploration | Forecasting · Systems | Jan 2020 | ●●● | 1,316 |
| ▸Judgemental Predictions are Low-Signal, High-Skill | Forecasting · Systems | Jan 2020 | ●●● | 2,396 |
| ▸Calculating the Shapley Value of Impact | Forecasting · Methods | Dec 2019 | ●●● | 752 |
| ▸Estimating Binary Outcomes using Continuous Distributions | Forecasting · Methods | Nov 2019 | ●●● | 1,446 |
| ▸Forecasting Terminology | Forecasting · Methods | Nov 2019 | ●●● | 1,101 |
| ▸Ozzie's Forecasting High-Level Thoughts | Forecasting · Systems | Oct 2019 | ●●● | 3,218 |
| ▸Considerations for Time-Scoring | Forecasting · Methods | Sep 2019 | ●●● | 634 |
| ▸Understanding Forecasting Systems for EA Purposes | Forecasting · Systems | Jul 2019 | ●●● | 1,690 |
| ▸Hybrid General Intelligences | AI | Nov 2018 | ●●● | 4,227 |
| ▸Decision Value Research Agenda | Forecasting · Systems | Nov 2018 | ●●● | 2,035 |
| ▸Exhaustive Futurism | Futurism | Oct 2018 | ●●● | 941 |
| ▸Pre-AGI Singletons | AI | Dec 2017 | ●●● | 2,513 |
| ▸Ponderings on Judgemental Estimation | Forecasting · Methods | — | ●●● | 4,090 |