Prescience

What is this?

Prescience is a website made by one dude to see how people think about the future.

The key component is The Wisdom of Crowds, a theory that states that (given certain factors) a group of people will be more accurate than almost any of them alone.

So I ask, when will various events and technologies of "the future" actually occur? You can help me with that. Once you log-in, you can vote on items and see how the crowd has predicted.

With luck, Prescience may turn out to be able to predict the future. And if not, it'll be interesting to see society's collective misjudgments.

I really appreciate feedback, including questions, so send me an email (raelifin@gmail.com) or leave a comment on my blog.

- Max/Raelifin

Examples

FAQ

Why do I have to register?

I know it sucks, but I have to tie each prediction with a user. I could allow people to vote anonymously, but then people wouldn't be able to keep track of how they voted, and many people might accidentally vote more than once. In the end I decided that a no-pain registration was simplest.

Can I research these topics?

Yes! This is not a test! If there's a friend in the room, the two of you can guess together. If you want to spend an hour on each question, go ahead. The goal here is not to see how you vote, but how everyone votes. One of the key hypotheses of The Wisdom of Crowds is that the combined errors of a large group, when averaged, will cancel out. Go wild.

These are questions of if, not when!

I considered asking visitors to provide estimates of how likely a technology is to have occurred at a time in the future. But it seems to me that (most) people are really bad at this sort of estimation, and that most of what we do when thinking about the future is handle one or maybe two stories about what is most likely to happen. This is what I'm asking you to vote on. My hope is that when aggregated, these stories provide a much more probabilistic view of what's ahead.

Why can't I see the results before I predict?

According to James Surowiecki, a primary component of a "wise" crowd is the degree to which individuals cannot pressure each other into acting a certain way. Even hearing how an "expert" would act is a kind of pressure, and often lowers crowd intelligence. Being able to see how others have predicted might trigger a cascade of votes, where later voters stick with the majority instead of considering all evidence available to them.

Doesn't letting people change their predictions ruin the "no peer pressure" thing?

It does, but I was getting a lot of feedback from people who wanted to change their minds, and it's important for me for this to be enjoyable. I do save people's original votes, and may add a feature to see only those if it turns out to be an issue.

Have a question that isn't on here? Email me at raelifin@gmail.com.

Privacy Policy

This is a small website set up by one guy in his spare time. I built this all for fun (I don't even have advertising) and I am not affiliated with any corporations.

I will never share any of the information (including votes) you provide, except in an aggregate format, where all information is pooled to show general trends.

I will never make public which users have voted on a given topic.

I do not ask for a name, but users may optionally add personal info such as gender or general location. Such personal information will only used for identifying trends in how certain demographics predict. As stated above, I will never share the specific info of a user.

If an email address is provided, I will only use it to write personal emails to the user. I will never provide emails to any third party, and will delete all record of an email upon request.

Copyright

All information displayed on these pages (including source code), that is not explicitly marked, is part of, or hereby released into, the public domain. I'd request that you give attribution when using data or code, but I won't require it. Images marked with a license are not public domain, and must be used accordingly.