Sweden's Crowd-Forecasting Platform 'Glimt' Helps Ukraine Make Wartime Predictions (france24.com) 20
alternative_right shares a report from France 24: [Sweden's] latest contribution to the war effort is Glimt, an innovative project launched by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) earlier this year. Glimt is an open platform that relies on the theory of "crowd forecasting": a method of making predictions based on surveying a large and diverse group of people and taking an average. "Glimt" is a Swedish word for "a glimpse" or "a sudden insight." The theory posits that the average of all collected predictions produces correct results with "uncanny accuracy," according to the Glimt website. Such "collective intelligence" is used today for everything from election results to extreme weather events, Glimt said. [...]
Group forecasting allows for a broad collection of information while avoiding the cognitive bias that often characterizes intelligence services. Each forecaster collects and analyses the available information differently to reach the most probable scenario and can add a short comment to explain their reasoning. The platform also encourages discussion between members so they can compare arguments and alter their positions. Available in Swedish, French and English, the platform currently has 20,000 registered users; each question attracts an average of 500 forecasters. Their predictions are later sent to statistical algorithms that cross-reference data, particularly the relevance of the answers they provided. The most reliable users will have a stronger influence on the results; this reinforces the reliability of collective intelligence. "We used this method and research, and we suggested to the Ukrainians that it could improve their understanding of the world and its evolution," said Ivar Ekman, an analyst for the Swedish Defence Research Agency and program director for Glimt. "If you have a large group of people, you can achieve great accuracy in assessing future events. Research has shown that professional analysts don't necessarily have a better capacity in this domain than other people."
Group forecasting allows for a broad collection of information while avoiding the cognitive bias that often characterizes intelligence services. Each forecaster collects and analyses the available information differently to reach the most probable scenario and can add a short comment to explain their reasoning. The platform also encourages discussion between members so they can compare arguments and alter their positions. Available in Swedish, French and English, the platform currently has 20,000 registered users; each question attracts an average of 500 forecasters. Their predictions are later sent to statistical algorithms that cross-reference data, particularly the relevance of the answers they provided. The most reliable users will have a stronger influence on the results; this reinforces the reliability of collective intelligence. "We used this method and research, and we suggested to the Ukrainians that it could improve their understanding of the world and its evolution," said Ivar Ekman, an analyst for the Swedish Defence Research Agency and program director for Glimt. "If you have a large group of people, you can achieve great accuracy in assessing future events. Research has shown that professional analysts don't necessarily have a better capacity in this domain than other people."
Fascinating (Score:2)
"Up Yours?" (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds#Criticism
Re: (Score:1)
but oops, russia is going broke even faster now.
Wisdom of the Crowd works only for (Score:3, Insightful)
Wisdom of the Crowd works only for certain use cases, essentially where social mechanisms affect the event. Does not work if you average out responses from a crowd of nerds on the questions about agricultural produce or a group of farmers on AWS vs Azure
Maybe it can work in getting more realistic / 'truthful' info from large group of people living in or adjacent to a war on the actual ground situation.
But that is of no use beyond countering propaganda across the world by both sides.
People fighting the war mostly know the ground situation. And leaders sitting in Washington or Kremlin have entirely different set of motivations for every decision, not at all related to the ground situation.
That's why it mentions no actual or material 'prediction' made which turned out right. Else that would have been the 2nd sentence probably.
Re: (Score:2)
Look at Fermi Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I also believe the situation on the ground in Ukraine today has very low predictive power on let's say a year from now and the willingness of people to have their governments financially support Ukraine a higher predictive power.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
long lines for nonexistan gas. high inflation. wages not being paid.
ask them how much longer they support the 3 day Special Military Operation. But do it away from russian goons with guns to get "more accurate" responses
Also, countless missing sons and funerals (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
situation on the ground is that russians are starting to notice they're in a war.
long lines for nonexistan gas. high inflation. wages not being paid.
ask them how much longer they support the 3 day Special Military Operation. But do it away from russian goons with guns to get "more accurate" responses
I believe that has very low predictive power. The situation after the fall of the Soviet Union tells me people in Russia will go without wages for a long time and the infrastructure to quickly send the average man to an almost certain death at the front is a very efficient deterrent as is people falling out of windows (this all you seemingly indicate but don't draw the next obvious conclusion from).
What I believe will be the deciding factor a year from now is that the hard part of getting a god chunk of mon
Re: (Score:1)
Russia will do what any other country like say the US would do if rightly or wrongly someone destroyed their economy to that level even if for their own fault.
Nuke someone.
It's not like pearl harbor couldn't have had a non-nuke response but that's just how things end up working, in completely unintended ways. Am sure the Japs were thinking that US will surrender or it's government will be overthrown with the same confidence.
It could also be worse than a small nuke you know. Situations evolve in Darwinian wa
But ... but ... (Score:2)
Beg Idealogues for a Back-Catalogue (Score:1)
Crowd Forcasting? (Score:5, Informative)
"crowd forecasting": a method of making predictions based on surveying a large and diverse group of people and taking an average
I'm sorry, that concept was already named in 1951, by Isaac Asimov, and the correct name is "psychohistory" ;)
Re: (Score:2)
‘Only watched the TV series (Score:1)
surprised that claims of being able to predict the (Score:2)
I'm barely outraged, but noticed the article didn't brag about how accurate it is/was, but merely made vague statements about the assumptions and process.
I'm not hearing that it actually works. Nor am I a believer that this could work outside of possibly some use cases, yet to be proven.
What exactly is an "average" of collected predictions. I smell bias. I'm not against "bias". But be up
Russia counters with ... (Score:2)
Sounds like the Delphi Method (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]