How ordinary people can forecast world events better than spies

Dan Gardner, a Canadian journalist, lecturer and author of best-selling books on they psychology of decision making, came up with an incredible story of how a group of citizen volunteers changed the way intelligence communities in the US approach analyzing and forecasting future political events.

In 2011, US leaders wanted to evaluate and improve how their intelligence agencies forecast future events. The intelligence community spends a lot of time analyzing information. They want to forecast what’s going to happen – especially geopolitical events.

University-based research teams were formed. One of them recruited thousands of volunteers who provided their forecasts, and some of the volunteers predicted future events with astonishing accuracy – and very consistently.

These were ordinary people, with average IQs and no previous experience of intelligence services, and without access to classified information. Furthermore, all the information they had was possible to find on Google. So why did they perform so well?