Individual Unite! Generating Synergistic Understanding Through Online Prediction Markets

Abstract

Synergistic understanding is a pre-existing self-organizing phenomenon of social evolution that has the power to generate knowledge to collectively identify and solve problems. Through the networking capabilities of the Internet, online prediction markets can harness synergistic understanding to gather information that would otherwise be lost. The isolated participants in these markets can, through accessing and using information contained within the system, collectively create new knowledge without premeditation. The system these markets create is based upon ten possible components that facilitate synergistic understanding. These components should be analyzed to determine their role in generating accurate predictions. This paper outlines the theoretical framework for Individuals Unite! (IU!), a collection of online prediction markets open to the public and built upon the ten possible components necessary to produce synergistic understanding and thus accurate predictions. IU! presents a possible solution to a multi-disciplinary range of problems that has the potential to benefit individuals, organizations, and society as a whole. IU! is a worthwhile undertaking for the Symbiotic Intelligence Project of Los Alamos National Laboratory to pursue because it closely aligns with the projects stated goals.