The people at Inkling have an interesting method for predicting the future. They essentially create stock markets for a possible future. People can buy or trade shares in each possible future.
The Eisenthal Report set up a predictive market for the 5th district Democratic primary in Massachusetts. People involved in the market buy and sell shares for each candidate.
We won’t know how accurate it was for a few days still, but I think it’s a really interesting idea for group-based decision making. It’s like voting, only people get to change their votes several times at different prices. The value of an option increases as more people buy it, and the value of the option corresponds to the predicted probability of that option occurring.
We usually don’t have the time to take weeks to make a decision, but it seems like a quicker process using this same idea could be used to make decisions as a large group.
-zot
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