Disclaimer: The purpose of the following is not to discredit Cliff High or Web But but instead question what a lot of us might be ignoring.
A lot of us who follow cryptocurrency have heard of Web Bot. Cliff High, its creator, comes across as highly intelligent, friendly, and knowledgeable about seemingly every subject... especially cryptocurrency.
People who are looking to trade cryptocurrency hold him in high regard on many popular forums, the largest of which (as far as I can tell) including The Dollar Vigilante. Members talk about his latest predictions, some plan their trading around his advice, and talk about his hits and misses with predictions. Some of his Bitcoin predictions have been good, as have predictions of natural disasters, while others, such as his predictions regarding the end of silver manipulation haven't been so successful.
But what I want to discuss - not criticise - are the methods and ideas he uses to create these predictions.
For those who haven't questioned it, here is what Wikipedia has to say:
"Web Bot is an internet bot computer program whose developers claim is able to predict future events by tracking keywords entered on the internet."
"Internet bots monitor news articles, blogs, forums, and other forms of Internet chatter. Words in the lexicon are assigned numeric values for emotional quantifiers such as duration, impact, immediacy, intensity, and others. The lexicon is dynamic, and changes according to shifts in emotional tension, and how humans communicate those changes using the Internet."
To oversimplify, it looks for key words written by people on the net and looks at the emotion used around those words. The more words are used with certain emotions, the more important it becomes, and then Cliff High interprets the data to create a prediction.
In other words, it relies on the belief that humans are able to collectively and unknowingly predict future events like some kind of unconscious hive mind fortune tellers.
Again, I don't mean to discredit or speak badly of Cliff High and his work. I think he does great work. What I'm surprised by is how people just accept this method for predicting the future of Bitcoin while ignoring its very strange, spiritual and non scientific approach to creating predictions.
Further, has anyone seen evidence of this Web Bit program being in use?
Here's my theory on why people believe it without question:
- people are blinded by money. As soon as wealth and opportunity are possible, we may put aside reason.
- we're dazzled by his intelligence. We've seen his speak; he darts from topic to topic with amazing facts and words we've never even heard. He sounds smart, so he knows what he's talking about, right?
- nobody else is questioning it so why should I?
Again, I'm not saying he's not onto something. Maybe he is! I'm also not saying that he's a con man or anything else like that.
But... is it just me or are people not questioning the very weird beliefs that underly his predictions? And if they're not questioning them, why not?
Disclaimer2: I enjoy listening to him speak and he's clearly a clever guy. Maybe he is clever enough though to know how to hook is all in.
Disclaimer3: this isn't an attack on web bot or cliff high or people who follow him (because I do too!). It's just a question about why we follow such a weird thing without question and if we should wonder why we're doing it.
I would look at web bots in general in the following manner. If you collected data on bitcoin and the average number of times the word "bitcoin" comes up last week is 1M, then today its 2M then you know interest in bitcoin has doubled. Now how many times do you also see "buy" or "sell" along with it. Then imaging being able to measure how many articles come out on bitcoin, are they positive or negative. Etc., etc.. this is definitely possible. Now Cliff High believes that people can see the future subconsciously, but I believe its just simply measuring data points and trends. If people believe bitcoin will go up then more people will buy and it goes up as a self fulfilling group dynamic. Not magical, not furtune telling, simple math. Sort of like a survey of who people will vote for ahead of a vote, if your survey is big enough and honest then you will know who is going to win. Web bots are like giant surveys and because people tend to post honestly its probably more accurate than a phone survey.
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