The Soothsayers

I’ve been watching Wrong Tomorrow for a while now.  They are slow (investigating the claims by hand?), and the number of predictions is small.  This doesn’t matter.  They, as far as I know, are one of the first attempts to really add a searchable, reliable time dimension to public discourse.  Web sites are, of course, ephemeral – but once information is out there, it’s hard to take back.

For thousands of years we’ve had a record of one form or another.  It was always incomplete, and rarely objective.  We’ve relied on hearsay, rumors, journalists, authors, television shows, databases, court records, and a thousand other methods to keep track of what people did and said in the past.  What we’re keeping track of now is also incomplete, but since we have a lot of storage, we’re tracking a much larger scope of … reality.

This brings up an interesting question.  In the past, there have been people who claimed to be able to see the future.  Their predictions were often vague, and easily interpreted to mean one thing or another.  Those who really could predict the future through analysis or guessing were often ignored until it was too late.  Now, we have a nascent but growing ability for people to establish their historical record of soothsaying.

Think a bit about what that means.  If we choose, we can track literally anyone’s skill at predicting the future.  Those who are consistently correct can prove it, or at least give better evidence than hearsay or testimonials.  Those who are consistently wrong … well, why are we listening to them?  We should expect our public officials and pundits to be correct in their predictions.  Every book, every speech, every statistic, research claim needs to be recorded, tracked and scored.

When that happens, these sites are going to come under a lot of fire.  I hope they are ready for it. :)

The Moral High Ground

If you want a perfect example of how to conduct a protest, watch and learn.  Personally, I think those police are crazy to ride motorcycles into a crowd like that.  The crowd is angry, and surges forward, knocking the police off their motorcycles and start to beat them.  Then, members of the crowd quickly pull the riot police out of the fight and into a building where they are protected.

Protests are not places to take out your vengeance on authority.  This is the right way to do it.  I’ve seen several videos like this, and despite the fires and fighting, the protestors are doing an admirable job of keeping the lid on while still getting their point across.  Every day the authorities shoot people and beat people, their cause and moral standing go down, and more people join the protests.  Every day the protestors behave like this, protecting even the cops that are trying to beat them with sticks, their cause is strengthened and they rise in standing with the rest of the population.  If this goes on long enough and the protestors can keep it together and keep gaining ground, they might have a chance.

In any case, to those who pulled that cop out of the crowd: keep it up, you’re doing it right.  I’m not going to tell you to be careful, because this isn’t the time for that.  Be strong, be tough, be persistent, and keep the big picture in mind.  The world is watching.

EDIT:  Glenn Greenwald has an insightful column reminding us of what could have happened: how many of these protestors would be dead or in hiding if we had bombed Iran like many people in our government wanted?