A few words about CAP – Computed Aided Prediction
What’s a web bot?
- Term first used commercially to describe “central control software for controlling the operation of an automatic utility meter reader system comprised of utility meters interconnected via the Internet” by MU Net of Lexington, Mass
- Common use in 2000 as short for “internet /or/ web robot”
- Wikipedia: “a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet.”
Current Approaches:
- Astrology (oldest)
- Religious or drug experience
- Language shift studies
- Word-frequency analysis (change) (with fine structure-constant or without)
- Indicator phrase studies
- Time-referencing language studies
- Cycle analytics (May be WFA/FSc related)
- Search queries
- …and combinations in conjunction with expert/learning systems
What Works Best?
All have hits and misses….which is why its such and interesting field…there is no standard scoring system yet.
The problem is if you forecast everything in a report, one or two right doesn’t balance off 900 wrong. You need to look at the statistics of predictions made total versus predictions come true over a set timeframe. Otherwise, it’s not really a valid prediction system.
How does Nostracodeus.com Work?
- Word-frequency shift in specified target groups.
- Example: Define 2 Fukushima Groups:
- One group is alarmist – [we should all be dead by now. Since we’re all going to die anyway, to predict death at other than a more precise manner is not useful]
- One group is engineers – who are engineering a solution. [They may indeed engineer a solution, but even when they win/it works, the alarmist group will claim victory.]
- Approach: Monitor the two groups over time and observe current developments
- Weigh shifts in events and data then project forward from there.
What does Nostracodeus Look Like?
Two views of it in operation. First, this is the pre-run main screen:
There are a number of set-up buttons that should be explained first. One of these is where you set your list of starting pages. If you were doing news sites, you might include CNN or BBC, or Al Jazeera, or whatever.
And you can configure your own dictionaries, keywords and core concepts using something we call “indicators.” An example of an indicator might be a phrase is “threated to…” If a new country starts to use an indicator term like this, and there is a conditional word too (“unless” for example, then as you’re reading through the data you can make a note that conflict potentials are rising.
As you can see, you can have 15 mission. So if you were a producer at Coast for example, you could have a UFO. And you might want an archeology mission, and so forth. And then you could print out and compare the goings on. And if you’re just reading the results, you can then like on the source link in the report and it will open up the page of interest.
So here is what the main screen when running and it looks like this:
As you can see, the run shown here is 522 pages analyzed out of 2317 which are in that mission.
When the run is complete, you simply go to the reports page and that’s where you can look at how the language falls out.
How Does Future Arise?
- Future is a shared resource
- The future is an arbitrage between the concrete/sequential and random/abstract
- Data sets (quantitative data) is concrete/sequential
- Emotional shift tends toward random/abstract
- The future that arises (other than geological accident) is an arbitrage between data and emo’s
What Makes Prediction Difficult?
- Simply: Placing bets on the arbitrage outcome.
- Core Concept: Global Mass consciousness is going through the same kind of psychological development that individuals go through
Homework Project
Using Google news search, test a number of “future words”
Examples:
“due Friday” reveals an Italian delegation will be in Iran tomorrow.
“next week: reveals Jim Caldwell is likely to be interviewed by the Redskins for a coaching job, near zero temps will arrive in Chicago. Looks like a band of record cold in the Midwest. There will also be a no confidence vote in Libya Sunday on the Ali Zeidan government. John Kerry will be in the Middle East…
One of the headlines next week will likely be the discussion about spinning off Detroit’s water department for money to help the city with its bankruptcy…
Enjoy!
.” This morning’s report will be nice, short, and to the point as we consider what may be out there in 2014. We’ll get to it right after some headlines and coffee.