Genius Forecasting

Editor's Notes

• #4: Alexander the Great sought council from Aristotle, Rameses from Moses, and George Washington from Benjamin Franklin. The pronouncements of these trusted advisors about the future would be called genius forecasting by today's futurists. an oracle was a person or agency considered to interface wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination.
• #6: Not all statements about the future by geniuses are genius forecasts, only those pronouncements in their areas of expertise for which they have proven insight. Genius forecasts can also come from people whose IQ is less than genius, but who have proven to have great insight in some specialty.
• #10: Visit prediction markets and see if it is possible to ascertain who guesses the most accurately about what. Prediction market consulting comp Prediction markets (also known as predictive markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures, event derivatives, or virtual markets) are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. The current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter. For example, a prediction market security might reward a dollar if a particular candidate is elected, such that an individual who thinks the candidate had a 70% chance of being elected should be willing to pay up to 70 cents for such a security. People who buy low and sell high are rewarded for improving the market prediction, while those who buy high and sell low are punished for degrading the market prediction. Evidence so far suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate as other institutions predicting the same events with a similar pool of participants anies are available on-line that can create such markets for special assignments like finding the best genius forecasters. The most famous prediction markets are the election forecasting markets run by the University of Iowa (Berg, Forsythe, Nelson and Rietz, 2001), but prediction markets have also been used to forecast movie revenues, corporate sales, project completion, economic indicators and Saddam Hussein’s demise Betting has probably been part of society’s way of dealing with uncertain futures since money and history began; prediction markets simply organize these activities into precise and generally interesting questions about future uncertainties. There are three main types of contracts. First, in a ―winner-take-all‖ contract, the contract costsnsome amount $p and pays off, say, $1 if and only if a specific event occurs, like a particular candidate winning an election. The price on a winner-take-all market represents the market’s expectation of the probability that an event will occur
• #11: Literature and Internet searches (including science fiction) can also be useful. The most creative and subjective work tends not to get into print as quickly or easily as it does into computer conferences, electronic journals, e-mail lists, blogs, and virtual worlds and games. Hence, searching these sources for genius forecasters should also be considered.
• #12: Another approach is to ask the wisest ones you know whom they would recommend and continue asking those recommended the same question in turn until a pattern of respected recommendations and referrals occurs.
• #13: A similar approach can start with recommendations from professional organizations relevant to the area of interest and review of the short résumés in their directories.
• #14: Observation at conferences and other gatherings of creative people is not only useful to identify the genius forecasters but also to see how others react to them. Many who have made important forecasts were ignored.
• #15: Contests could offer a prize to the forecast with the greatest insight and usefulness. The Mitchell Prize from the Club of Rome stimulated and attracted visions from many futurists and scholars over the years. A contest could be held for the most important future vision and forecast for the year 2025 that could be acted on today by the current leadership. مثا ایده بازار که در دانشگاه داره برگزار میشه، سامسونگ مسابقه گذاشته بود توی شریف
• #16: Follow current events to learn whose advice and forecasts showed more insight over time.
• #17: Public Delphis (explained in the "Participatory Methods" chapter in this series) could invite the general public to send in their view of the future. These submissions could be condensed in a newspaper column, inviting further comments from the readers as a second round of the public Delphi questionnaire. Such a newspaper column could be a repeating questionnaire, collecting and feeding back subjective forecasting from the public and the public's reactions to such future vision.
• #19: READING and SCANNING DIVERSE SOURCES.
• #20: A simple way to do this is to keep track of one's guesses, review periodically, determine why guesses are right some times, and why some are not. When guesses are wrong – ask what was wrong in the assumptions or mental model of how the world works, that led to the wrong guess? When guesses are right - what was right with the assumptions or mental models that led to the right guess. And then modify the assumptions and the mental models of the world. Self-correcting false assumptions should improve guessing.
• #21: Doing opposite of the usual.
• #22: Participating in simulations and games. As long as organized armies existed, war games helped train soldiers to meet various possible situations they might encounter. Leonardo da Vinci‘s work with wings attached to a person is an early recorded instance of a simulation.
• #23: Solitary and guided meditation and visioning exercises
• #24: PERCEPTUAL EXERCISE, DREAMS, FEELYSIS, and THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. ادراکی = PERCEPTUAL مسیر=trajectory Thought experiments were used by Albert Einstein. He imagined being a photon traveling at the speed of light through the universe. Suddenly he noticed that his trajectory was bending or curving relative to mass.
• #25: extradimensional point of view by altering normal brain function and can help guide the future planning of the community. The Dutch used the telescope from a tower to see what ship was coming into port and what it was carrying; they would know, in advance of anyone else in the seaport, what to buy and sell before the ship entered the port. Early warning satellites in the earth's orbit and the crow‟s-nest on ships are other examples of extradimensionality to alter normal perception and gain insight.
• #26: Interning with those of great insight and vision.
• #27: One key value of genius forecasting is that it cuts time and costs. It is much easier and less costly to collect genius forecasts than it is to build a computer model.
• #28: Someone just being right before does not mean they will be right again. How do you know when to trust your intuition? What if two genius forecasters contradict? How do you know whose judgment to follow?