Posted on 04/02/2014 9:55:23 PM PDT by Theoria
The morning I met Elaine Rich, she was sitting at the kitchen table of her small town home in suburban Maryland trying to estimate refugee flows in Syria.
It wasn't the only question she was considering; there were others:
Will North Korea launch a new multistage missile before May 10, 2014?
Will Russian armed forces enter Kharkiv, Ukraine, by May 10? Rich's answers to these questions would eventually be evaluated by the intelligence community, but she didn't feel much pressure because this wasn't her full-time gig.
"I'm just a pharmacist," she said. "Nobody cares about me, nobody knows my name, I don't have a professional reputation at stake. And it's this anonymity which actually gives me freedom to make true forecasts."
Rich does make true forecasts; she is curiously good at predicting future world events.
Better Than The Pros
For the past three years, Rich and 3,000 other average people have been quietly making probability estimates about everything from Venezuelan gas subsidies to North Korean politics as part of the Good Judgment Project, an experiment put together by three well-known psychologists and some people inside the intelligence community.
According to one report, the predictions made by the Good Judgment Project are often better even than intelligence analysts with access to classified information, and many of the people involved in the project have been astonished by its success at making accurate predictions.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
lmao
“So You Think You’re Smarter Than A CIA Agent”
I know that I’m smarter than a Pres_ent.
And damned smarter than a Vice President.
The Pentagon tried to do this immediately after 9/11 to predict the next enemy moves in the War on Terror. The Media hooted at it. The key is that the participants need to have some expertise and be “plugged in”.
The Woods Hole institute did something like this when they were searching for the lost submarine, “USS SCORPION”. They asked every sub commander, XO to place a ‘bet’ as to where the sub would be found based upon its last known position, course & a list of theories as to what caused the sub’s demise. The search area was narrowed partly on the consensus and the sub was located.
The Pentagon tried to do this immediately after 9/11 to predict the next enemy moves in the War on Terror. The Media hooted at it. The key is that the participants need to have some expertise and be “plugged in”.
The Woods Hole institute did something like this when they were searching for the lost submarine, “USS SCORPION”. They asked every sub commander, XO to place a ‘bet’ as to where the sub would be found based upon its last known position, course & a list of theories as to what caused the sub’s demise. The search area was narrowed partly on the consensus and the sub was located.
Remember an intel operation called “Able Danger”?
Wonder why Bill Clinton shut it down when he found out what it was capable of?
Coincidently it was shut down at the same time preparations were being made for the 9/11 attack?
Couldn’t have anything to do with what was in a doc recovered in Afghanistan now could it?
Let’s see maybe what’s in a letter from Osama bin Laden to Mullah Omar can give us a clue.
“The media is 90% of the preparation for the battle”
Why Bill Clinton couldn’t have possibly gotten rid of Able Danger because you can figure out when a terrorist attack is coming down the pike by simply following what news stories are being orchestrated as the preparations for an attack now would he?
After all Hillary told us after Benghazi there is no preparations for the attacks, they’re “spontaneous”.
This just reinforces what I've been saying on the stump, the citizens of the United States are better at deciding issues, especially those affecting their local communities, than the "experts" in Washington are.
James R. McClure Jr.
Jeffersonian Anti-Federalist Democrat candidate for IN09
Also, in their infinite wisdom, could they not hire a web designer who would drop the haute couture light gray font for something legible?
What stock should I pick so I can retire in two years instead of 15 years?
You left out drug trafficking.
The CIA is a joke and always has been. It should be disbanded as a waste of taxpayer monies. They rarely see anything coming and provide useful intelligence. It has become a Presidential ass-kissing agency with more polidiots than spooks.
And damned smarter than the CIA director, Hummus boo boo Brennan, too.
Their success shouldnt really be a surprise. Much of the purported intelligence gathering by “diplomats” ( = spooks) has historically consisted of culling ordinary news sources and putting that together with astute personal observations.
Good point, sex and drugs, gay pride and drug money laundering, what else does the CIA not to like?
The article states that some people (In the group of 3000 people) are much better at making predictions then others including the so called experts with better source information.
There must be a reason(s) why this is so and the article neglects speculation on why this is happening. That some people are operating above the statistical probability and doing so consistently also points to the fact that something else must be in play here. What do you think it is, luck?
These amateurs are admittedly gathering their information from various news sources. Where does the news source get its info and how accurate is that info vs the source info available to intelligence agencies?
However, the information being asked for is not about what already has happened but about what is going to happen. The article’s point is about predicting the future. Ask yourself how is predicting the future possible? That is the point I was trying to though out for discussion in my comment.
In some of the research done on remote viewing and non local consciousness it was discovered that our normal concepts of time and place, or space do not follow what we would consider normal reality.
In fact, the best research I know that demonstrates the ability of one’s consciousness to exist outside the present involves remote viewing and non local consciousness. (study on Near Death Experiences, Holotropic Breath Work, some drug experiments and some religions have also skirted these concepts but not with the backup research provided by institutions like Princeton, University of Penn. and Stanford).
Much of the research done in these various studies were also, normal people, amateurs some of which happened to be better than others at performing some of the tasks asked of them, no matter how ridiculous those tasks sounded at the time.
Outside the above remote viewing / non local consciousness explanation of predicting the future, I had also posted a couple other comments on why or how this may be possible. Feel free to shoot me up on these concepts too.
One, Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History, part of the UC system which continues to publish pieces on this subject (It’s a takeoff of the Isaac Asimov’s ideas in ‘The Foundation Trilogy” ) easy to search.
and I also through out a couple “group think experiments” that resulted in some success; the concept of Gestalt Psychology from the early 1900’s Germany and The 1% factor from Transcendental Meditation in the 1970’s
I would be interested in knowing HOW you think predicting the future accurately as stated in the article is possible?
Great info....are you a history professor?
You hit the nail on the head!
Great info....are you a history professor?
No, just an addict.
And surprised you’re reading 2 day old posts but thanks for the kind compliment.
Ping.
Our very own The Comedian did that. Got some very good results.
Then he got some very scary results (which he wouldn’t share, and I don’t fault him for that!), announced he was going to vanish, and then did so.
I have to play catch up at times, a busy life. I like historical info.
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