The Good Judgment Project: the wisdom of crowds (like us)

I had a hard time picking the appropriate forum for this story - mods, if you can help place it better, thank you. The only other one I thought might be appropriate was Dreams & Predictions....but it's more about knowledge sourcing.

I heard this on NPR's Morning Edition today, and found it quite interesting. Considering all the suspicions that sites like this one (I'd say "ours", but I'm not that important) are prowled by spies and cointel shills, I think this will interest a lot of you, too!
The radio magazine spot didn't have a title, so I made one up to entice; but on NPR's site, the text version is titled:

So You Think You're Smarter Than A CIA Agent.

It discusses a project where ordinary online civilians with no training or access to classified info are being asked for predictions, and their results, WHEN AVERAGED, are proving more accurate than the Intelligence people with access to top-secret classified documents!!

you can get very accurate predictions about geopolitical events without access to secret information. In addition, access to classified information doesn't automatically and necessarily give you an edge over a smart group of average citizens doing Google searches from their kitchen tables.

The story of the inspiration:

The wisdom of crowds is a concept first discovered by the British statistician Francis Galton in 1906.

Galton was at a fair where about 800 people had tried to guess the weight of a dead ox in a competition. After the prize was awarded, Galton collected all the guesses so he could figure out how far off the mark the average guess was.

It turned out that most of the guesses were really bad — way too high or way too low. But when Galton averaged them together, he was shocked:

The dead ox weighed 1,198 pounds. The crowd's average: 1,197.

(see the vid below for a deGrasse Tyson introduced bit about it on NOVA/PBS)

Pretty impressive, eh?

The Good Judgment Project

HARNESSING THE WISDOM OF THE CROWD TO FORECAST WORLD EVENTS

The Good Judgment Project is a four-year research study organized as part of a government-sponsored forecasting tournament. Thousands of people around the world predict global events. Their collective forecasts are surprisingly accurate.

We are participating in the Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE) Program, sponsored by IARPA (the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity). The ACE Program aims "to dramatically enhance the accuracy, precision, and timeliness of forecasts for a broad range of event types, through the development of advanced techniques that elicit, weight, and combine the judgments of many intelligence analysts." The project is unclassified: our results will be published in traditional scholarly and scientific journals, and will be available to the general public.

Okay, get this: they have 3,000 recruits, people like us, regular folks who surf the web and pay attention to the news, and those people are trained to do some simple numerical things, and then asked for predictions, such as if Israel will be bombed (or whatnot) within a specified period of time. The recruits are left to their own devices - the one lady interviewed says she's a nobody, a pharmacist who just pays attention to stuff. She's now considered a "Super Forecaster" for her accuracy. And what does she use for her predictions? GOOGLE SEARCH.

Now, did you notice who's funding this project?? THE GOVERNMENT!! Their IARP - ACE Program is paying for this - so, they don't think we're so stupid after all, maybe???

I don't know about you guys, but this seems to make not only a lot of sense, it also seems that ATS would be a great source for that project - to do aggregate "wisdom" studies!!

Anyway, read the links, listen to the story, and watch the vid for more. I hope some of you will enjoy discussing this idea.
Keep in mind, they are going to be ADDING RESEARCHERS to their group -

(if any of the research team leaders are on here...pick me! pick me! I want to play!!!)


Here's the vid included on the Good Judgment Projects front page:

This is facinating. When I have more time later I'll check out your links. I do want to say this though. The Government has never thought of us as stupid or uninformed. Thats why they have to lie and be so decietful and constantly feed us with misinformation. People forget that we out number them and that is the downfall of people vs government.

s n f

reply to post by BuzzyWigs


The obvious danger here is to believe that mob rule is desirable or applicable in some way to public policy.

For example, if you ask a wide variety of people whether we should do some awful thing to a group of people, naturally some will oppose it and some will approve. The result is that that group of people in question, by consensus, are only partially damaged.

BTW, I read Thích Nhất Hạnh's "Miracle of Mindfulness" still!

reply to post by greencmp

The obvious danger here is to believe that mob rule is desirable or applicable in some way to public policy. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

But it's not talking about "mob rule" - it's talking about forecasting what's likely to happen.
Did you watch the little video?

It explains how the guy Gelman (the Ox-weight-guessing-game inventor), found that when he averaged (mean or median?) the answers (all of which were 'wrong') the answer was off by one pound. It's about hearing different ideas, and compiling them for a 'consensus' based on math -
Gelman also thought the 'crowd' (or mob) was incapable of making good judgments, and should not be allowed to vote.
(by the way, Here's to TNH.)

BuzzyWigs
reply to post by greencmp

 

The obvious danger here is to believe that mob rule is desirable or applicable in some way to public policy. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

But it's not talking about "mob rule" - it's talking about forecasting what's likely to happen.
Did you watch the little video?

It explains how the guy Gelman (the Ox-weight-guessing-game inventor), found that when he averaged (mean or median?) the answers (all of which were 'wrong') the answer was off by one pound. It's about hearing different ideas, and compiling them for a 'consensus' based on math -
Gelman also thought the 'crowd' (or mob) was incapable of making good judgments, and should not be allowed to vote.
(by the way, Here's to TNH.)

edit on 4/2/2014 by BuzzyWigs because: (no reason given)

Obviously, my comments are a little off topic since you haven't expressed a specific desire to use this for policy research.

I think I accidentally conflated this with another thread! What if all political candidates had to do this for one year?

"Half smile" is on my ceiling above my bed!

reply to post by greencmp

Obviously, I am projecting the idea that this is desirable because of the expected outcome (minimum wage increase) and I am challenging that presumption. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Why are you linking it to minimum wage increase?? I don't see a tie-in, but on the other hand, incidentally, a few minutes after the story aired there was a bit about how Ford, the original Henry Ford, at right about the same time, doubled his employees' wages. (At least I don't think the two were related...but I was driving my husband's too-big truck, in the rain, right after it got light out, on the highway, so I may have been distracted).

In any case, I am a supporter of raising the minimum wage, as well as capping income (ala Jesse Ventura's Off the Grid show).
But that's off-topic.

Anyway, very much appreciate your contribution to the thread!

BuzzyWigs
reply to post by greencmp

 

Obviously, I am projecting the idea that this is desirable because of the expected outcome (minimum wage increase) and I am challenging that presumption. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Why are you linking it to minimum wage increase?? I don't see a tie-in, but on the other hand, incidentally, a few minutes after the story aired there was a bit about how Ford, the original Henry Ford, at right about the same time, doubled his employees' wages. (At least I don't think the two were related...but I was driving my husband's too-big truck, in the rain, right after it got light out, on the highway, so I may have been distracted).

In any case, I am a supporter of raising the minimum wage, as well as capping income (ala Jesse Ventura's Off the Grid show).
But that's off-topic.

Anyway, very much appreciate your contribution to the thread!

Yeah, I edited my above post, somehow I confused this with another thread so please pardon the irrelevant comments.

there's some kinda quote i can't quite recall..
"the wisdom of the realm is more oft heard in taverns than kings chambers"
..something like that

reply to post by UNIT76


Well, OBVIously...
LOL
EDIT: forgot to add the round...

Still, I think it makes a lot of sense....
but I can't cipher how to make it apply to elections. Any ideas?
Take all the votes, figure the total for each candidate, then ..... ??

hm

reply to post by BuzzyWigs

Take all the votes, figure the total for each candidate, then..

..add the total to the national debt?

reply to post by UNIT76

..add the total to the national debt?

Yes! THAT'S IT!! And divide that total by the number of people who work on Capitol Hill....
Legislative/Executive/Judical branches.....
535 or something like that.

They each pay their share, and for the rest of us, all debt is cancelled. We all start over.

reply to post by BuzzyWigs


i just noticed your signature

I read you post, followed the links and watched the video. Sorry, I'm not buying it.

Guessing a weight is different than picking a political candidate. A dead oxen is something very tangible that, with a little thought, it's weight can be guessed within a ballpark figure. What politicians have to do is something the average American, especially in this day and age, doesn't know much about. Because of that intangible, we're left with what the politician promises to do with certain issues. Issues that, again, the average American doesn't know much about. The average politician is educated in either law school or an Ivy league school with a major in law/political science. Law takes a birds eye view of society and goes from there. This is how policies are implemented, from a broad overview by those with a select education. This is also why so many policies implemented by politicians don't work, thereby needing more and more policies as addendum's to previous ones. They think the average citizen doesn't know how things work so they take it upon themselves to tell us. Studies like the one you pointed out might tell them that Joe citizen is smart in this regard when voting in group fashion, but when they get into office things change. And things change because studies like the one you pointed out only serve the people it benefits. Those in charge who are dependent on citizens to vote in a group fashion. They tell us we're smart in a group setting by using an analogy, a dead ox, and we fall for it hook line and sinker.

Group-think indeed.

The point is, that since these two factions look at the same issue from such disparate viewpoints, that a "median outcome" doesn't mean squat. This isn't a numbers game, it's a game that determines how a society will work. The saying "comparing apples to oranges" applies here.

Just my 2 bits.

reply to post by Peacetime

Guessing a weight is different than picking a political candidate. A dead oxen is something very tangible that, with a little thought, it's weight can be guessed within a ballpark figure. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

And I thank you for your two bits...
I see that it isn't clear that the article/websites are not talking about making decisions. They are not talking about political clout.

They are talking about being able to see what's unraveling around the world without 'top-secret clearance'. That's all -

It's nothing to do with modern voting. It's about crowd-sourcing and math, to figure out "what is most likely to happen/be the truth" -

This is how policies are implemented, from a broad overview by those with a select education. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Yeah....those with "select education" who have never had to struggle and have no idea what it's like to be a trying-to-stay-afloat middle-class person right now.

So - yeah. Anyway, it's more about 'intelligence gathering' than politics; although the video talked about not giving people political clout because they were too stupid; the fact remains, the article/news piece is about 'wisdom of crowds' on average....

reply to post by BuzzyWigs


I just took the political angle and ran with it. That's the kind of mood I'm in today. It is interesting about the "group guess", for lack of a better term, but I don't know if I would read too much into it. It's as if you're trying to get to the theory that sub-consciously we're on a higher level than we are individually. If that were true, IMO, we would be much better off as a society than we currently are. As it stands, it's as if we need leaders to instigate a group think first. That kind of defeats the purpose...............don't you think?

Now if we, individually, got that train rolling ourselves with peace as the driving force behind it all.........then we'd be onto something.

This is a good topic BTW S & F

reply to post by Peacetime

It's as if you're trying to get to the theory that sub-consciously we're on a higher level than we are individually.

No, that's not my take on it - actually I was thinking about the old-skool "bell curve" of so-called IQ.

George Carlin, you know. The average student (a C student) is the average. That means half the people are below average.

Now if we, individually, got that train rolling ourselves with peace as the driving force behind it all.........then we'd be onto something. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Agreed.
I don't think the OP content or links addressed either one (political clout OR group-consciousness-elevation)....

But I do think that CIA/FBI (whatever alphabetical spy guy undercover whose-he-wutzit) agents don't have that great of an edge on us normal civilians. We can think outside the box.....
at least as a collective. And that is something!

reply to post by BuzzyWigs


I figure, at least they're honest about it. I wouldn't take part in it, though.

reply to post by brazenalderpadrescorpio


Why not? Because the government is funding it? Because the "SuperForecasters" might be(come) targets? Or abducted like precogs?

reply to post by BuzzyWigs


I don't know what it is. Something about it just gives me the creeps. The heebie-jeebies, if you will. Lol.

Somebody opened another thread about this topic. Anyone interested in other members' thoughts that didn't participate in this one can check it out at:
www.abovetopsecret.com...