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<p>This is a project by IARPA (like DARPA but for the intelligence community) where they are attempting to combine crowdsourcing with machine learning.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hybridforecasting.com/?utm_medium=GBRPaidSocial&utm_campaign=GJProspecting">https://www.hybridforecasting.com/?utm_medium=GBRPaidSocial&utm_campaign=GJProspecting</a></p>
<p>I signed up and took the test, which was in three sections:</p>
<ul>
<li>True/false statements about geopolitics, where (I'm guessing) the false answers were generated by randomly replacing one of the nouns with something plausible. Then I had to provide my confidence level. This is actually really similar to how psychology researchers would design experiments, and now it's spread to algorithmically generated homework for companies like Cengage.</li>
<li>Visual <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition_(psychology)">pattern recognition</a>, where the patterns were line drawings that progressed in color, rotation, or some other property. Psychologists call the simple version of this "seriation."</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Seriation_task_w_shapes.jpg/228px-Seriation_task_w_shapes.jpg" width="228" height="240"/> <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Seriation_task_w_shapes.jpg/228px-Seriation_task_w_shapes.jpg">[image link to Wikipedia]</a></p>
<ul>
<li>Numerical pattern recognition, with sequences of numbers following some unknown rule. I was less confident about this one, but hey, it's a test. I've taken lots of tests, and it's not like they're going to come and get me if I fail, right?</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/MiB.svg/482px-MiB.svg.png" width="482" height="480"/> <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/MiB.svg/482px-MiB.svg.png">[image link to Wikipedia]</a></p>
<h1>Right?</h1>
<p>The directions said I would get some feedback, but I haven't seen it yet. Maybe it will come by e-mail, in which case I'll post it in the comments. Or maybe it will be in the form of a personal visit from my paranoid friend up there, in which case I won't remember anything. But the blockchain will . . . unless there's an alien equivalent of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralyzer">neuralyzer </a>for computers.</p>
<p>In any case, the next step is some training, which will supposedly raise my ability to forecast geopolitical events. I'll report on that next time. I think this is going to be fun.</p>
<p>REFERENCES</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition_(psychology)">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition_(psychology)</a></p>
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