[UA] Hello, and Merchant Godwalker war

[wild at park.net]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 03:05:25 +0930, Brendan Williamson wrote
>    These things have been around for ages. John Brunner
even
> predicted a
> national market-based predictions system run by the
> government in "The
> Shockwave Rider", and he wrote that back in '75.

IIRC the Delphi system that Brunner described was slightly
different.  It was based on the concept that if you asked
_enough_ people the answer to a question they couldn't
possibly know the answer to (like "How many loaves of bread
did China produce in 1931?") then the answers that the
respondants guessed at would bell-curve around the correct
answer.  From there, he posited, you could ask _enough_
people to guess the answer to a future question (such as
"How many people will be murdered in Detroit tonight?") and
get the same effect.

To fund this, and to encourage people to take part, they
made bets on the numbers they were putting forward. Correct
guesses paid off at predetermined odds.

I've always been intrigued by this idea, but never got
around to doing the research to find out if Brunner invented
the Delphi system out of whole cloth or, like many of his
books, if he took ideas from contemporary social science and
extrapolated them into a future setting.

John

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