Ghana Tries To Regulate Online Prophecies (economist.com) 31
Ghana has decided to deal with the viral spread of prophetic content on social media by setting up an official reporting mechanism for sensitive predictions, a move triggered by the August 2025 helicopter crash that killed the country's defence and environment ministers along with six others.
After the accident, TikTok clips circulated showing pastors who claimed to have foreseen the disaster before it happened. Elvis Ankrah, the presidential envoy for inter-faith and ecumenical relations, now asks prophets to submit their predictions for review.
Charismatic preacher-prophets have been a fixture of Ghanaian public life since Pentecostalism arrived in the 1980s, but social media has amplified their reach and made their claims increasingly outlandish. Police have threatened to arrest prophets who cannot prove their predictions eventually came true. Some two-thirds of Ghanaians favor giving divine intervention a role in politics. Ankrah recently declared that most prophecies submitted to him are "total bunk."
After the accident, TikTok clips circulated showing pastors who claimed to have foreseen the disaster before it happened. Elvis Ankrah, the presidential envoy for inter-faith and ecumenical relations, now asks prophets to submit their predictions for review.
Charismatic preacher-prophets have been a fixture of Ghanaian public life since Pentecostalism arrived in the 1980s, but social media has amplified their reach and made their claims increasingly outlandish. Police have threatened to arrest prophets who cannot prove their predictions eventually came true. Some two-thirds of Ghanaians favor giving divine intervention a role in politics. Ankrah recently declared that most prophecies submitted to him are "total bunk."
Predicting this policy will fail (Score:1, Funny)
Confirmed: Ghana more progressive than america (Score:2)
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If I have to hear one more prophecy about how we will make it to mars in 2026 or all cars will be automated by X, by the richest person in the world....
Those are predictions not Prophecy.
Prophecy relies on the authority of God-given information. True prophecy is therefore never wrong because it always carries the authority of God's truth and character. On the other hand, prediction is based on man's ability to determine what may happen in the future.
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Typical religion (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except when it isn't.
Given all the times the Rapture/End Times have been failed prophecy in my lifetime that would be never true.
Re:Typical religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone alive since the Pandemic and subsequent Disinformation Wars knows that "faith" is a toxic and stupid idea which is incompatible with modern global civilization.
Religion needs to be viewed with great suspicion. Science and the people who discovered real things about the world need to occupy that place of reverence.
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Indeed. Also note that "reverence for faith" comes from the incredibly evil things basically all faiths have done at one time or another to suppress some other faith, including quasi-faiths like persona-cults and the like.
My stance is that if people want to have some belief, they are allowed unless they harm others as a consequence. But a belief itself does not deserve any respect, just because some people have it.
Scientific standards are and will remain what separates "likely truth" from made-up hallucinat
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Bunk prophesies is a hallmark of all religion.
I don't recall any actual prophesies from either Defenders Of The Holy Tab Key or the Users Of The Divine Spacebar in the great Whitespace Programming War back in the day, but maybe I just forgot.
Thankfully, the kool-aid wore off of both camps and most of the fighters decided "screw it, fighting a holy war over whitespace isn't worth it, I'd rather spend my time writing good code" and both religions, if they still exist, have very few die-hard followers left.
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Bunk prophesies is a hallmark of all religion.
Indeed. It is all they have. So they create these (after the fact, but their marks cannot fact-check end hence usually do not find out) whenever they think they can get away with it. There are, at this time, zero actually reliable prophecies by religion. There are some that are in the noise floor (if you claim 1000s of things, you may get the occasional hit), but that is it.
Can we do it with AI? (Score:3)
Require all AI to be approved before it is released.
Maybe get rid of those scumbags selling 'robotic dogs that fooled a veterinarian' that could not fool a toddler.
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But it DID fool a veterinarian! The vet thought the 'owner' had to be pulling some kind of prank but the 'owner' was, in fact, quite serious! Vet fooled.
Is it finally time? (Score:3)
Wasting brain power on believing completely foolish notions is really a job for AI.
With it's Markov chain prediction and no real sense of critical thinking or logic it should excel in conspiracy theories and stupid viral ideas.
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Are you not allowed to have stupid beliefs online? And who exactly gets to "police", and what will this "policing" look like? I guess *you* get to decide this? If people want to believe "stupid things", that's their right.
Only most? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be fascinated to know which ones weren't total bunk, and how he determined their legitimacy.
Re:Only most? (Score:4, Funny)
As James Randy showed, make a vague enough pronouncement and it can fit whatever you want. The best illustration was when he handed out horoscopes to a bunch of people and asked them how well the description fit them. Almost all of them said it was a good fit.
Problem was, he gave the same "horoscope" to all of them. It was the wording which led these people to believe it fit them even though it was the same for all of them.
The same is probably what's happening here. Someone made a vague enough "prophecy" that when something happened that "prophecy" could claim to have come true.
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Yep. I also like the descriptions of the "cold reading" experiments by the Randi Foundation. Especially the one where the actress doing it had to assure people afterwards that no, she most certainly had no "powers". And they did not believe her. Most people are really easy to fool and then insist they have not been fooled when confronted with evidence.
Another nice (if only quasi-religious) example is the MAGA movement and their total disconnect from reality.
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Indeed. And people are likely to vastly overvalue that one hit and ignore the 1000s of fails. It is like "Somebody won the lottery! I will too!" Dumb beyond belief as soon as some a bit larger numbers are involved. Essentially people that never left the mental frame of a tribe.
Here's a prediction: (Score:2)
This isn't going to work out like they want it to.
Or maybe... (Score:3)
People (let's not call them influencers, let's call them faith would-be leaders) make prophecies, the same way Faux Noise spouts its own prophecies, and there isn't a rapid response to each and every one.
Then IS comes in...
Can Ghana do some moderation here? (Score:2)
Here is my prophecy: this article will appear as a dupe in a few days.
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Too easy!
Reminds me of this cartoon (Score:3)
Oh No! (Score:2)
Miss Cleo to be banned