Tom Foremski reports on a futurists’s conference in Silicon Valley:
At one point, the panel was asked about what problems needed to be solved. Mr Engelbart said that humanity faces a serious problem in being able to collectively make intelligent decisions. Unless this is addressed, we will face big problems.
This strikes at the heart of Mr Engelbart’s work for more than 45 years: creating tools for a collective approach to solving big problems through the use of technology as a tool to augment human qualities and abilities.
My Question: Do prediction markets fit this picture? Could prediction markets (and decision markets, their cousins) help us to “make intelligent decisions”? What’s your take?
My Answer: “Information derivatives” will help us to take the pundits’s predictions with a grain of salt. That’s for sure. For the rest, I will let Robin Hanson detail his wet dreams about how decision markets could save the Planet Earth by helping shareholders to fire all the incompetent CEOs (which is the world’s #1 a calamity, according to our good doctor Hanson).
Addendum: See Robin Hanson’s comment.
I don’t think incompetent CEOs are the worlds #1 calamity. No idea where you got that from.
Yes. PMs are incredibly concrete relative to an Engelbart talk.