Show HN: A social platform to record and debate predictions of the future | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A social platform to record and debate predictions of the future

predibly.com

78 pointstompec39 comments

The problem with this is that predictions should, ideally, be clearly specified, offer a percentage estimate (0-100% likelihood), and have some reliable method of validating the outcome.

The Good Judgement Project does all these things: https://www.gjopen.com/

This website, on the other hand, seems to encourage none of these epistemic virtues. It's people making more or less precise verbal predictions on twitter and then assessing themselves.

Suggestion: require "skin in the game" ie. make predictors risk something of value (with commensurate chance of gain if their prediction manifests).

This would likely increase prediction quality/accuracy.

Whenever you get stuff wrong show "Oh, That was a Black Swan" somewhere ;)

Who will validate the predictions? Manual validation will not scale.

Who will determine the odds of predictions?

People can offer bets, those with differing views can take the bets. You can even make a market with floating odds like BetFair used to.

There's Augur https://www.augur.net/ that's a decentralized protocol for predictions. You can bet on predictions or use the prediction and outcome data in your decisions.

My favorite prediction from a similar site:

http://longbets.org/601/

Jeremy Keith bet that “The original URL for this prediction (www.longbets.org/601) will no longer be available in eleven years.”

He looks set to lose, which is great news for him, honestly.

Hi there, My friend Nathan and I recently launched Predibly.com: a social platform to publicly share your predictions of the future and have interesting conversations about them. Nathan had the idea last week, I build the MVP and we'd love to know your thoughts!

It's cool. Develop an abuse flagging policy early.

Will do, thanks for the tip!

I predict this will be difficult.

A relevant episode of EconTalk[1]. If I remember correctly, Philip Tetlock is running a continuous betting project to try to determine what characterize good forecasters.

[1]:https://www.econtalk.org/philip-tetlock-on-superforecasting/...

Direct link to the project: https://www.gjopen.com/

I like it! Love that you can sort by time of prediction or by time of post/popularity. Sort by "controversial" could be nice.

As soon as you have more than a dozen you will need tags or category. Tech, science, politics, sports... will cater to vastly different people and foster different discussions.

I don't like the fact that Twitter is required to sign up.

Glad you like the idea! Categories are on our list of features to implement. We're thinking about hashtags like Twitter does. Yeah, Signup with Twitter was mostly to accelerate the development time but an email signup will be introduced in the future as we're aware that some people prefer this way.

I have a similar site I've been working on, although ours is more focused on betting and quantifying accuracy. It's https://hunches.app

Who's validating if I am right and the crowd is wrong?

Note for US users, this is buried in the TOS:

> If the User is a U.S. Person, User represents that user is an accredited investor

https://hunches.app/terms-of-service

Nice idea! In case you haven't seen it, this site uses a similar concept:

http://longbets.org/

Jeff (AWS) funded this one.

I really like the design!

I would like a filter for controversial, having people add: The earth will still exist in 2020, is not so interesting.

I normally don't like leaderboards, but in this case, it would be nice if and only if it was weighted by how controversial the prediction is.

Nobody suggest having a "prediction reputation" that keeps track of the quality of people's predictions? Like, after the even should have taken place, open it up for up/down votes or such?

Is there an API? Could I build a betting site around it?

Not yet sorry :) Maybe one day!

That would be nice.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend predictionbook.com.

Honestly, not as nice as what was shared from a UI perspective. However, the user experience on predictionbook.com appears better.

https://predictionbook.com/

Interesting, but there is no legal disclaimer, about page, corporation, cookie usage information, etc

Does that mean you don't log in anyway any information about visitor, and that you share all gathered information by contributors with the public ? For example, where can I download the whole database of prediction, with votes, comments and history ?

If I can't, I'm assuming this is not fully public and you potentially use my data as a visitor and/or contributor to make money, and you therefore need a legal entity to represent the website.

C'mon, it's a side project. Let the person develop some functionality before expecting him to add all this useless legal mumbo-jumbo.

Sorry, but I care about my rights, even if you are only experimenting ideas.

It isn’t your “right” to demand that he follows your countries local laws, especially if he isn’t from your country.

He is well within his right to make the website exactly how it is, and you are well within your rights not to visit it.

True, and I made my decision. I only wanted to warn about it to other people who might browse here. The intent of the website is not clear.

do they need a legal entity to profit off your data if you are willingly giving it up to them, unaware of what they'll do with it?

Nice. Imagine with a BTC betting api on top.

This used to exist. From memory it was called Bets of Bitcoin. Don't think it's around any more.

There’s such a system built on Ethereum: https://www.augur.net/

How about infinite scroll?

Nice design.

I can't wait for all the STEMlords and edgy kids from r/futurology to blabber about Elon bringing them to Mars.

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