LAST UPDATE July 14, 2026
Culling the internet
Political forecasting, chimpanzees and the probability factor – Skai
This is a question psychologist Philip Tetlock attempted to answer through decades of research that he summarizes in his books Expert Political Judgment and Superforecasting. Tetlock gathered volunteers who were asked over several years to make predictions about possible political events. The predictions should have a clear time horizon, a clear question that can be answered with a Yes or No, and be accompanied by a probability. For example, "80% chance that the People’s Republic of China will annex Taiwan by 2028."
Contemporary religious forecasting is similar. The end of the world, whether from an act of God, UFOs, climate change or any other factor that spells doom for humanity is a constant feature of human culture. Though the agent that is/will cause it can change repeatedly, the doom itself doesn't. Judgement Day is hard-wired into humanity.
Religious forecasting is based, typically, on assumptions about a deity (or deities) or supernatural forces in general, while political forecasting is similar, but is generally based upon assumptions about the motivations of political personalities.
The results of this study are revealing, to say the least. Tetlock’s sample consisted of 284 "experts," professionals who made a living commenting on political and economic developments, who gave a total of more than 82,000 probabilistic assessments. 76% were male, 52% held a doctorate, 96% had some postgraduate education, and 61% had given at least one interview to a major media outlet. The first finding is that, on average, they barely outperformed a chimpanzee throwing darts at random, i.e., the completely random assignment of probabilities. The second, and perhaps more humbling, is that simple statistical models explained an average of 47% of the variation in events, while even the best of the experts barely managed more than 20%. And thirdly, no matter how many years of study, how much experience or how much prestige someone had, they were no different from a cultured amateur who was called upon to predict developments in a region he knew nothing about."
If the data collected here is accurate, then it would appear that, at best, the average professional commentator and predictor is as skilled/unskilled as the average person, period, which is to say, focus, knowledge access, experience and official media position gives no real advantage in accuracy.
An interesting expansion of this research would be to gather "predictions" from within governments, that is, from decision makers in leadership offices both political and military. These persons are held to account for what they expect to happen. Vast amounts of money is spent to prepare for their specific expectations. But accessing those kinds of predictions is probably nearly impossible, they are typically highly secret, and sensitive in a way that, if brought out into the open, would shake up friends and enemies in a way the average prediction from a "talking head" on the internet or TV never could. Comparing these two different worlds of "predicting" would probably show how the random opinions of a media personality, as can be "predicted," demonstrates the need for conjecturing exciting, attention-grabbing prognostications that contain some logical thread for the listening audience to agree with. But delivering the actual predicted events into reality isn't that important.
The book Expert Political Judgment: How Good is it? by Tetlock is at Amazon
AI versus the user
I go to the UK The Times and want to do an archive search (I am a subscriber.) What happens:
Search the archive of The Times and Sunday Times using artificial intelligence.
Your search question: What date range can I search for in this Times Archive?
Answer: I’m designed specifically to search The Times archive for news and history. I can't help with that request.
Your search question: What is the oldest date I can search articles for that are within the times archive
Answer: I’m designed specifically to search The Times archive for news and history. I can't help with that request.
"Fashion takes the pulse of things before anyone else"
Nostalgia and politics in the wardrobe. Story at Tanea [Greek]
Nostalgia is a political purpose. It is an anesthetic. It is easier to subjugate a people by educating them to have a sweet obsession with the past and fear the future..."
The "it is easier" statement corresponds to a long running idea, to put it mildly, of some two millennia, made by observers of human activity. As a literary archetype it shows up over and over, a formula worked out like this:
- Ancient Greece: easier to rule by customs than by laws
- Roman era: easier to rule by using bread and circuses
- Renaissance: easier to rule by fear
- Enlightenment: easier to rule by beliefs
- Industrial: easier to rule by bureaucracy
- 20th century: easier to rule by propaganda
- Television age: easier to rule by entertainment
- Information age: easier to rule by distraction
- Internet age: easier to rule by algorithms / engagement
These statements appear to be frustrated conclusions by (perhaps) cynical observers. The implication is that "it is easier..." is contrasting with something else, that is "It is harder to rule by..." and any number of words can be inserted there: reason, engagement, gifts, platitudes, cookies.
In the case of the statement about nostalgia, it is a quote from the UK publication The Gentlewoman Magazine discussing "...at the renovated Frick Collection museum in New York, the historic halls with works of European painting welcomed models, celebrities and modern businessmen in the role of patrons of the arts and culture."
The "political purpose" would be, in this calibration of ideas, that fashion and art, are the customs of nostalgia, whether the participants and the writer recognize it or not, certainly not what is intended since the context is that fashion is the vanguard of the future.
New census data shows how populations are shifting by metro area, county – WMUR
Populations are growing at a faster rate in the southeastern United States, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday...."
We bake out own bread
"Mathematicians warned against rising tech industry influence in a declaration describing the many challenges that AI poses to mathematics research. The timing of the declaration comes two weeks after OpenAI publicized one of its AI models as having disproved an 80-year-old mathematical conjecture in geometry."
June 2, 2026: Well, we're back: apparently due to the WHM-Cpanel vulnerability that happened recently, this site was redirected at root level (but not DNS) to a gambling site. To whit:
CVE-2026-41940 is a critical pre-authentication remote code execution and authentication bypass vulnerability (CVSS score: 9.8) that affects cPanel & WHM (Web Host Manager) and WP Squared (WP2). It allows unauthenticated remote attackers to inject arbitrary session data into the server and gain root-level administrative access without any valid credentials.
May 26, 2026
Cartoon laughs Comic Atomic