Notes
Four things worth writing down, each measured against the records rather than argued from first principles. There is no publishing schedule; a note gets added when the archive can support one.
August 2026
People who write predictions get scored. People who say them don't.Six of six for Jakob Nielsen. One of seven for Elon Musk. The difference isn't rigour, it's the medium.August 2026
What makes a prediction testableFour things have to be present. Most public predictions have two or three, which is why so few of them ever get marked right or wrong.August 2026
The goalposts problemEveryone knows to screenshot the claim. Almost nobody writes down what would settle it, which is the half that gets quietly rewritten.August 2026
What a 96% accuracy score actually measuresOne tracker has Gary Marcus at 96%. Another analysis puts him near 52%. Neither is lying. They counted different things.August 2026
How a track record lies without a single false statementSelection is the whole trick. You never have to fabricate anything — you just have to pick.August 2026
How to check whether someone actually predicted what they say they didFour checks, in order of how often they catch something. Most disputes die at the second one.August 2026
Sometimes the honest verdict is that nobody can tellThe pressure is always to produce a verdict. Refusing is the harder discipline and the one that keeps the rest of the numbers worth anything.August 2026
Everyone predicts in January and finds out in DecemberThe clustering is severe enough to be a structural fact about the genre, not a quirk of one archive.