Jayson_Virissimo comments on Overconfident Pessimism - Less Wrong

25 Post author: lukeprog 24 November 2012 12:47AM

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Comment author: kilobug 25 November 2012 10:09:25AM 3 points [-]

Not directly related to the topic, but since you're speaking of PredictionBook, there is a question I would like to ask : it seems from http://predictionbook.com/predictions that the PredictionBook crowd is mostly calibrated, on average, except on the extrema (100%/0%). How does that match with the "people are broadly overconfident" studies ? The two dataset seem contradictory to me. I notice I'm confused.

I could pop explanations like "people on prediction book are not representatives of people in general" or "the kind of predictions made on prediction book isn't the same" but they sound more like rationalizations (popping an explanation with poor data backing it to avoid admitting confusion), so I don't accept them.

Does anyone here has better answers (or data back to my "guesses") on that data contradiction ?

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 28 November 2012 04:36:05AM 0 points [-]

I thought through precisely those same explanations myself. Currently, I'm leaning towards overconfidence bias being one of those "biases" that is easy to reproduce in the artificial situations created in the laboratory, but that diminishes quickly with feedback (like would usually happen in the "real world").