The Prediction Project

The Prediction Project creates, collects, and curates materials documenting and analyzing how humans have predicted their futures over time. The project highlights systems ranging over time and practice from sheep entrail-based haruspicy, to the origins of modern epidemiology, to climate change simulation and AI. The project’s content is hosted at predictionx.org and includes video interviews with several dozen experts at Harvard and around the world, along with essays and multi-media online interactives explaining key ideas. The most extensive interactive created to-date is “The Path to Newton,” which illustrates and explains the history of ideas that led to Newton’s theory of gravity (see path-to.org). It will ultimately serve as a prototype for “Paths to” Darwin, Einstein, and Modern Genetics–all in the works. Curricula for a variety of online and in-person (Harvard) courses are also available.

A key motivation behind the Prediction Project is to inspire a deeper global conversation about how today, unlike in the past, quantitative simulation allows us to quantify how “certain” we can be about various aspects of the future–including climate change.

Future expansions in the works for the Prediction Project include a book, museum exhibits, a non-profit foundation, and potentially a documentary series. Prof. Alyssa Goodman is the leader of the Prediction Project, and she plans to visit the UK in Fall 2022 to expand its content with new collaborations.

A video of the MS Teams recording of this presentation is online on YouTube.  Comments from the expert audience are attached as images below, from MSTeams conversation.