Prediction provides you…

13. May 2009 by justdanika.

I was inspired after reading about the poor ability of groups to make decisions that there are ways to make deliberation work better.

“We have to move from old to new” Sunstein says on pg 102 of Infotopia. I tore into the next chapter delighted to hear that there could be a happy ending. But when I arrived I found gambling, betting and prediction markets.

I’ll give it to Sunstein…provide an incentive and it will get people with insider information  to share that information and keep people who have no clue from voting in the first place. I think the use of the internet to pool this information is really compelling. It creates a platform (most likely anonymous) that allows people to voice what they actually believe based on the information they have because there is a monotary incentive to get the answer right.

Sunstein is telling us to move from old to new…new being the space the internet has created to pool this information. To collect a group of people with information means you can make the outcome of the group’s deliberations more accurate. Is prediction that important though? Perhaps the real use of this tool should be to collect people who have information in order to steer decisions. Get a group of people with a common thread (whatever the topic of discussion is) to collect in a space (virtual or physical) and share their knowledge to make deliberation better, not just more accurate.

I look forward to seeing what other tools Sunstein has regarding the power of the internet to create change, not just to help predict future happenings. Though I will admit, predicting the future has a nice ring to it.

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