In the monotheist traditions prophets are given specific instructions from God which they must disseminate. In smaller, local traditions prophets are skilled in interpreting signs from the gods, such dreams, the flights of birds, or reading entrails/ashes/bones.
Consider instead the use of narrative in structuring and communicating a prediction (at various levels of detail). Even in the case of good predictions using state-of-the-art methods, people often ignore them or fail to account for them properly. The question becomes how to get people who are not intimate with the prediction methods, or who do not trust the authority, to act as though it were true.
See also: self-fulfilling prophecy, where the contents of prophecy drive people to act in such a way as to cause it to come true. This is the baseline model for start-ups: a good enough story about success causes people to expect more success, which is the mechanism by which start-ups are judged to succeed. By contrast a popular trick in ancient myths is a bad prophecy which people cause by trying to avoid it, ie telling the king one of his grandchildren will supplant him, so the king tries to have them all drowned but one is smuggled away into the lands of the king’s enemies and then returns at the head of a large army 18 years later. Opposite the first example would sit something like propaganda distributed by invading armies whereby they claim opposing them is hopeless and try to persuade enough people of this that the actual defense is actually compromised.
It seems like the appropriate cycle would be: 1. state-of-the-art prediction methods to estimate the future; 2. an analysis of how the story might affect the prediction under various scales of adoption, namely if everyone acting as though it were true changed the outcome; 3. build a story according to the desired outcome in light of 2.
Prophecy is a narrative prediction
In the monotheist traditions prophets are given specific instructions from God which they must disseminate. In smaller, local traditions prophets are skilled in interpreting signs from the gods, such dreams, the flights of birds, or reading entrails/ashes/bones.
Consider instead the use of narrative in structuring and communicating a prediction (at various levels of detail). Even in the case of good predictions using state-of-the-art methods, people often ignore them or fail to account for them properly. The question becomes how to get people who are not intimate with the prediction methods, or who do not trust the authority, to act as though it were true.
See also: self-fulfilling prophecy, where the contents of prophecy drive people to act in such a way as to cause it to come true. This is the baseline model for start-ups: a good enough story about success causes people to expect more success, which is the mechanism by which start-ups are judged to succeed. By contrast a popular trick in ancient myths is a bad prophecy which people cause by trying to avoid it, ie telling the king one of his grandchildren will supplant him, so the king tries to have them all drowned but one is smuggled away into the lands of the king’s enemies and then returns at the head of a large army 18 years later. Opposite the first example would sit something like propaganda distributed by invading armies whereby they claim opposing them is hopeless and try to persuade enough people of this that the actual defense is actually compromised.
It seems like the appropriate cycle would be: 1. state-of-the-art prediction methods to estimate the future; 2. an analysis of how the story might affect the prediction under various scales of adoption, namely if everyone acting as though it were true changed the outcome; 3. build a story according to the desired outcome in light of 2.
Divination is psuedo-RNG | a gut-check.
Some related posts:
Optimizing for Stories
Simulacra