- Do you think we could all start a movement and change the world?

Midas Oracle = Internet Strategy + Collective Forecasting

Our approach:

• Organic marketing
• Objective forecasting

Our means:

• Mastering both the Internet Force (PageRank) and the Predictive Force (accuracy and precision).
• Evangelizing thru blogging and workshops.

Our ethics:

• Tell the truth, and get results.
• Don’t do evil.

- Does it sound like a program to you?
- Do see any traction in that simple mission statement?
- What would you do differently? Leave a comment.
- Any other suggestions? Do you like it that I made it simple? At the contrary, do you think is it too simplistic?
- What are the movements out there you think I should look at?
- Who are the people I should add in the list?

Now, some news:

1. Midas Oracle is in re-construction. I am re-building the “pages” —that’s what you see on the scrolling menu on the frontpage. It will take some days.
2. The WordPress theme (that commands the blog layout) will be updated, in the near future. The new version is said to have many options, which we will take advantage of.
3. Once all those technicalities are finessed, I will go back to drafting ideas about the “Prediction Market Institute” —it won’t be that, actually. I have had some mutant ideas. Some others had their own clever thoughts. Mixing up all that will lead us to develop ideas completely different from those originally floated.

I have in mind 3 parallel ways of naming that organization.

As for the IIF, the big difference with our project is that we will craft a “cause” that will go beyond our prediction market circle. As I repeated many times, the key is to make allies from outside of the field of prediction markets. The IIF does not have a “cause” and does not have powerful allies —we will.

Stay tuned… Next week will be crucial… I will have talks with PM people…

Previously: The 6 little things David Pennock didn’t tell you about the Prediction Market Institute

Nicholas Kristof:

So what about a system to evaluate us prognosticators? Professor Tetlock suggests that various foundations might try to create a “trans-ideological Consumer Reports for punditry,” monitoring and evaluating the records of various experts and pundits as a public service. I agree: Hold us accountable!

Should we set up a registry of track records —in addition to our prediction market stuff?…

- #2. - It shall not be a pure academic endeavor. It shall be a mix between academics, exchange operators, and other participants in the field of prediction markets. The term “applied research” conveys it. It is “applied” in the sense that it is not research eggheads bottling up in yet another Ivory Tower. The outputs of this PMI should be useful for the prediction exchanges and the software vendors.

- #3. - One of the purpose of regrouping the prediction market forces into a grand consortium would be to seek external alliances with some foundations, think tanks or educational organizations that might share our ideology —yes, I said “ideology”.

- #4. - It is not such a great idea to set up our own organization from scratch. It is more pragmatic to seek out the creation of a “unit” or “department” within an already existed organization that has a larger purpose than ours —for instance, one focused on “derivatives”, “wisdom of crowds”, “digital business”, “knowledge management”, “forecasting”, or whatever meta keyword you can think of and that encompasses the prediction markets and their cousin mechanisms.

- #5. - It shall have a clear strategy, game plan, and way to assess the results.

- #6. - It shall have David Pennock on top. That guy is our common denominator. He is our most sociable element. He never slammed anyone. (The only time he went on being bombastic is when, being a boy, he told his mother, “I don’t like broccolis, they taste like fractals.”)

- Kansas Governor Seen as Top Choice in Health Post. — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is emerging as President Obama’s top choice for secretary of health and human services.

Now, look at the red line in the HubDub chart below: the prediction markets nailed her since the beginning of February 2009.

Of course, a scientific comparison would have scrutinized more closely than I did all the news articles from the New York Times (and from other mass media). That’s what we are going to do with the “Open Institute Of Prediction Markets“. To this end, I will set up a portable and distributed “Prediction Markets Consortium” in the coming days. Then, I will try to anchor it in an institution of higher education, and, after that, I will try to gather support from think tanks and foundations. Not an easy task, but I know now that I can count on many prediction market people and companies. It should be an industry endeavor —and it should deliver results, in the end (demonstrating the social utility of the prediction markets by documenting velocity, and, from there, following a logical thread which I will talk you about later on).

PS: About velocity… Remember that we are about the prediction markets versus the mass media (The New York Times, The Times of London, NBC News, BBC News, etc.) —as opposed to the vertical media (Politico.com, Nate Silver’s blog, PoliticalBetting.com, etc.). The distinction is very important to keep in mind.

UPDATE: The only stuff I can find about Sebelius for HHS is that February 9 piece from the Associated Press (which didn’t get a mass audience since it was not-republished in the New York Times or other mass media), saying that she was “near the top” for the job. Well, “near the top” is not like saying she was “on top”.

UPDATE #2: The Sebelius story is picking steam in the mass media. See Nate Silver’s take.

ADDENDUM: Andrew Gelman tells me that he thinks that “the Associated Press is a mass medium. It is a cooperative organized by a bunch of newspapers.” I think that the AP news articles do indeed reach a big audience when they are re-published or cited in the mass media. But in the Sebelius case above, it was not the case.

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Previously: The truth about prediction markets

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Who will be the next nominee of the HHS, now that Daschle has withdrawn from consideration?

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No HHS contract on InTrade, BetFair or NewsFutures.

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However, last year, they did not.

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What I am trying to convey is that:

1. An argumentation on accuracy will sometimes win and sometimes lose. (For the Super Bowl, 2009 was a lucky year, and 2008, an unlucky year.)
2. An argumentation on (relative) efficiency (when the event is occurring as the result of a complicated situation) will always win.
3. The 2 reasons our prediction market scholars have always emphasized accuracy is that, one, efficiency is more difficult to define, two, there are no data available for free —whereas polling data can be found easily to establish relative accuracy.
4. Since building those data is costly, let’s create The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets, which will collect $$$ from many sources, gather our research scientists to establish a protocol, build those data, and free them of copyright on the Web.
5. The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets will not, by itself, conduct research. It won’t be a competitor of David Pennock and the other research eggheads. It will help them with data, and with plenty of other things.
6. The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets will do plenty of things. You will see.
7. By the way, The Open Institute Of Prediction Markets won’t be called that way —one reason being that, at the age of the Web, cloud computing, and network collaboration, it won’t be centralized.
8. I am happy to report to you that some big organizations I have talked to lately are very seriously looking into this project. There is now a real chance to succeed. I want to thank all the prediction market people and prediction market organizations who have been supporting of this project. I want to tell them that February 2009 is time to act.

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Thanks for your attention.

Thanks for your continuous support since 2003.

We are going to achieve something, in the end of this decade.

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- be a member of the LinkedIn group on Prediction Markets (we are 192 197, whereas John M’s group is only 77) —I will post info there;

- be a registered member of Midas Oracle (we are 116) —I will send one or two or three mass e-mails to give the crucial info, in 2009;

- be a feed subscriber of Midas Oracle (we are 1,000+) —I will post additional info here;

- be in touch with Chris Masse —not every info will be public (so as to keep crucial info away from some psychos).

Do join us —right now.

Be part of this grand project —right now.

I have asked Mike Giberson, Mike Linksvayer, and (of course) David Pennock, to give me feedback, so I can see whether I am on the right track or not. If it’s the case, and once I have integrated their feedback, I will show it to 3 other prediction market luminaries, and so forth, until an ethereal sense of perfection emerges out of it. (Could take weeks.)

Stay tuned.

PS: Google is forbidden to snatch that “mission” webpage, don’t ever think of trying to read the cached webpage.

UPDATE: Got feedback. Need to work on it.

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