Here's an absolutely wonderful 2023 zoom talk (https://www.youtube.com/live/aZ5sLAevrSc?si=ykNpSKBsrDW9-LMr)on Mesopotamian divinatory practices from Dr. Irving Finkel,(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Finkel) Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum)

Being the fantastic crowdsourced resource that it is, Wikipedia offers ~1000 different methods of divination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_divination)used "enough" to be listed there. We of course make no warranties as to the utility of any of these systems, but thought we'd point out this fascinating page! Feel free to comment on your favorites below...

During April of 2023, in Harvard's GenEd 1112, we'll talk plenty about AI. In this post, I'll include a very recent NY Times series students can draw upon (especially "Part 2: How Does ChatGPT Really Work?"), and also a New Yorker piece from 2015 where Nick Bostrom, Oxford's notable philosopher of our tech future, took a grim view of humanity's AI-dominated future. These articles will supplement discussions, in concert with student's own contributed media, along with the conversation with Ben Shneiderman about AI available on LabXchange as part of the Prediction Project.

As this great new video at Grist explains, researchers at Exxon scientists made very accurate predictions of Climate Change (the "Greenhouse Effect") beginning as long ago at the 1970s. But then, as predictions started to seem to be accurate (coming true!) in the 1990s and 2000s, Exxon's official party line was to stress the UNCERTAINTY in Exxon's and other scientists' predictions. Many thanks to Harvard GenEd 1112 v.2023 Teaching Fellow, Dr. Urmila Chadayammuri, for the pointer to the post. We will use it in the coming weeks of the class!

In the Fall of 2020, my colleague, Prof. Immaculata De Vivo of the Harvard School of Public Health, and I wrote an essay about the public perception of risk and uncertainty, especially with regard to COVID-19. In this post, we are gathering comments from students in the Spring 2021 edition of "GenEd 1112: The Past and Present of the Future," an undergraduate course I teach at Harvard. Students were asked to read the essay, and then comment here on which part(s) of the discussion they expect would be most illuminating for non-quantitatively-inclined readers --and/or to suggest another framing of the issues discussed that would be more effective.

We thought we'd start this thread so attendees at the "AI & The Future of Health" event at the Harvard Radcliffe Insitute can continue discussion online. Feel free to post your thoughts and questions here, and the PredictionX team will facilitate followup. (Event video link will go here once event ends.)

Here's a starter sample video from 2020's version of Harvard's "on-campus" version of Prof. Goodman's course on Prediction, from Harvard student Elliott Hyman.

This forum allows for the inclusion of images, like this one right in-line with your post. Click on the camera icon below, insert your image & then use the blue-dot grab handles to re-size. You can also include video with the video camera icon, attach files with the "upload" icon, add dividers with the odd "line-in-rectangle" icon and code snippets with the >_ icon. GIFS are also possible, as are emojis. What though, you say about URLs? All you need to do is "select" the text you want to link to a URL, and then an option for adding a link will appear. Please do use that functionality rather than including long URLs in these posts. Thanks--the PredictionX team.

So many non-Astronomy-experts wonder what "Retrograde" motion means when it comes to Mars, so I made this really short video to show you! Thanks go to the staff & students in the 2021 Harvard GenEd 1112 (Prediction) Course for asking me to post this!