Over the last few years, in part due to Less Wrong, I've stopped paying attention to short-term issues. I basically don't consume news anymore as I don't like wasting time learning facts that will be outdated in two-weeks. I think this is a pretty good strategy for information consumption but it means I have very few stable/reasonably distributed predictions with one-year horizons... and they're almost all basketball predictions.
Is it worthwhile to read political and economic news just so I have more things to test my calibration on? Would reading more news even improve my predictions or just make me more/falsely confident in them?
Is it worthwhile to read political and economic news just so I have more things to test my calibration on?
No. You want to calibrate yourself? Run through the dozen or so trivia calibration datasets which have been linked on LW, or work your way through the >=136 predictions for 2011 on PredictionBook.com.
Would reading more news even improve my predictions or just make me more/falsely confident in them?
If I were to read the NYT like I used to, cover to cover, I think my predictions would improve. Hidden in obscure articles were many early indicato...
As we did last year, use this thread to make predictions for the next year and next decade, with probabilities attached when practical.
Happy New Year, Less Wrong!