history-society

Superforecasting: What Makes Good Predictors In 2011, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) launched the largest forecasting tournament in history. They recruited thousands of volunteers to predict geopolitical events: Would North Korea conduct another nuclear test? Would the euro crisis escalate? Would Assad fall? The volunteers competed against each

Prediction Markets: Betting on the Future In July 2024, a week before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Polymarket showed his chances of being the Democratic nominee at 30%. Pundits were still debating whether he'd stay in. Party officials were publicly supportive. But the money knew.

Wisdom of Crowds: Surowiecki's Conditions In 2003, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) proposed something that seemed insane: a futures market for terrorism. You could bet real money on the likelihood of assassinations, coups, and attacks. The idea was that such a market would aggregate intelligence better

Groups Can Be Smarter Than Individuals—If Structured Right In 1906, the British statistician Francis Galton attended a livestock fair in Plymouth. He was there to observe a contest: guess the weight of an ox after it had been slaughtered and dressed. About 800 people submitted estimates—farmers, butchers, and

Collective Intelligence Why Groups Can Be Smarter Than Experts—And Why They Usually Aren't In 1906, Francis Galton went to a county fair and discovered something that should have been impossible. A crowd of 800 people guessed the weight of an ox. Individually, their guesses were all over

The Institutionally Creative Human We've now traveled through 10,000 years of institutional history. We've seen that the standard story—the straight line from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states—is wrong. We've seen egalitarian cities, seasonal hierarchies, temples before farms, and people