Manifest started in 2023 as a festival about prediction markets and forecasting; it has since become an annual excuse to treat curiosity as a serious hobby — long conversations, unfinished arguments, bets, and the company of writers, researchers, and builders you admire from your favorite niche corners of the internet.
“Equal parts Math Olympiad and Burning Man” — a gathering of nerds who want to find the thinkers and practitioners they vehemently agree (and disagree) with, share a meal around a cozy campfire, and come away with radically new ways of thinking.
Talks, panels, debates, workshops, games, prediction market tournaments, a night market, career fair, and much more. Much of the schedule comes from attendee-led sessions.
On Friday, the first night of Manifest, Lighthaven will be open and free to the public for our Career Fair & Night Market. An open-air evening celebration of all things markets; it’s a chance to meet people, share ideas, see strange gadgets, and wander around in a transcendent twilight…
No ticket requiredI met many well-known figures I’ve been reading for years. Where else will you meet multiple people within 24 hours who casually mentioned the short story Funes the Memorious in conversation?
I love Manifest. My subsidy provided for swaying bauble lights, warm soporific nooks, flames and corridors, souls brought to Earth together, eyes lighting up at their electric worlds made real.
Gwern came to my talk and told me at the end “I disagree with everything you said and your entire theory of aesthetics is wrong.” lol
It bills itself as “a festival for forecasting and prediction markets,” which fails to capture the spirit — it’s more like “Substack and Twitter live”, a festival-conference-party-Burning-Man for nerds with many interests.
The Manifest conference has been a successful experiment: put enough introverts with common interests into a confined space and they’ll spontaneously turn into extroverts.
For much of my life, I have poured my attention into tough-to-explain solitary pursuits, sitting in quiet corners on the fringes of gatherings wondering if they’re worth the effort. Not so last weekend.
Questions? Please reach out.
