Tag Archives: Wisdom of Crowd

Could Markets Have Predicted the Civil Rights Movement?

Author’s note: It’s been quite some time since my last post. In fact, it’s the last day of November and this will be my last post this month. It’s been a bit hectic getting settled in Ottawa, in addition to some other things that have been going on, but I do hope to get back into a regular habit of writing posts again.

I came across an article recently that espoused the value of the efficient-market hypothesis through the success of InTrade — when it was still functioning. In case you’re not familiar, InTrade is a betting site that would post contracts, for instance — “Mitt Romney will be the Republican Presidential nominee” — and then people could ‘buy’ that contract if they thought Romney would be the nominee or (sell) that contract if they thought he wouldn’t. There’d be all kinds of questions, not just political. There are questions about world events (the US will find Saddam Hussein) and questions about awards shows (Avatar will win Best Picture).

In the article, there was a small blurb about futarchy:

The potential of prediction markets to aggregate and reveal information is so great that some have surmised they might remake whole political systems. Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, has endorsed what he calls “futarchy,” a form of government that would use prediction markets extensively as a policymaking tool. If the aggregated predictions of the market are better than the individual predictions of a few appointed experts, why not let citizens bet on, rather than submit to professional opinion on, for example, which tax policy is more likely to bring prosperity?

For the most part, there certainly seems to be something to the argument in favour of the wisdom of the crowds, but as I’ve written before, the wisdom of the crowds can’t always be trusted. When thinking about the wisdom of the crowds in the context of policymaking, I wonder about the crowd’s ability to divine the need for civil rights. That is, I wonder if, during the time leading up to the civil rights movement, the crowd would have accurately predicted it was beyond time to implement a new level of equality in the United States. Or, what about in the time of Lincoln? Would the wisdom of the crowds have decided that black people deserved freedom?

The Wisdom of the Crowd Has Spoken: One-Timers It Is!

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a post about the top 10 FIFA goals of 2012. In the list, there were a collection of goals, some of which were “one-timers” and some of which were the result of a great deal of individual effort. Well, on Thursday, FIFA highlighted the top 3 vote-getting goals. On the list, there was one goal that was the result of a great deal of individual effort and two goals that were the result of one-timers.

Is that what you expected? Would you have expected more individual effort goals to have been on the list? In looking back at my post, I didn’t say whether I thought one-timers would have more on the list and it wouldn’t really be fair to hazard a “guess” now that the answer is known.

So, I wonder — of the top three goals remaining, which do you think will win? Since there are only three videos, I’ll embed them below.

Here’s the one individual effort goal:

One of the one-timers:

And the other one-timer:

If I had to guess, I think the last one will probably win.

Interestingly, “just hours after FIFA announced its candidates for the 10 best goals of 2012,” there was a goal that some are saying may just be the goal of the century! After watching it, I think you’ll see why:

“Simply stunning” — the sports announcer says. Even the England fans applauded the goal (from a Swedish player). Unfortunately, this goal will not be considered for “best goal of 2012” for FIFA, but they say that it could be considered for best goal of 2013. I wonder what the betting line in Vegas is for this winning best goal of 2013. . .