[Link] How to see into the future (Financial Times)

fortyeridania

How to see into the future, by Tim Harford

The article may be gated. (I have a subscription through my school.)

It is mainly about two things: the differing approaches to forecasting taken by Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, and Roger Babson; and Philip Tetlock's Good Judgment Project.

Key paragraph:

So what is the secret of looking into the future? Initial results from the Good Judgment Project suggest the following approaches. First, some basic training in probabilistic reasoning helps to produce better forecasts. Second, teams of good forecasters produce better results than good forecasters working alone. Third, actively open-minded people prosper as forecasters.

But the Good Judgment Project also hints at why so many experts are such terrible forecasters. It’s not so much that they lack training, teamwork and open-mindedness – although some of these qualities are in shorter supply than others. It’s that most forecasters aren’t actually seriously and single-mindedly trying to see into the future. If they were, they’d keep score and try to improve their predictions based on past errors. They don’t.

How to see into the future, by Tim Harford

The article may be gated. (I have a subscription through my school.)

It is mainly about two things: the differing approaches to forecasting taken by Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, and Roger Babson; and Philip Tetlock's Good Judgment Project.

Key paragraph:

So what is the secret of looking into the future? Initial results from the Good Judgment Project suggest the following approaches. First, some basic training in probabilistic reasoning helps to produce better forecasts. Second, teams of good forecasters produce better results than good forecasters working alone. Third, actively open-minded people prosper as forecasters.

But the Good Judgment Project also hints at why so many experts are such terrible forecasters. It’s not so much that they lack training, teamwork and open-mindedness – although some of these qualities are in shorter supply than others. It’s that most forecasters aren’t actually seriously and single-mindedly trying to see into the future. If they were, they’d keep score and try to improve their predictions based on past errors. They don’t.

people who don't keep score don't make good predictions.

Entirely true.

If there would be a general belief...

General beliefs are generally ignorant nonsense, particularly with regard to mathematical abstractions on aggregates that people have no concrete experience dealing with themselves.

Fun fact from Ian Hacking, via Wikipedia:

The word Probability derives from the Latin probabilitas, which can also mean probity, a measure of the authority of a witness in a legal case in Europe, and often correlated with the witness's nobility. In a sense, this differs much from the modern meaning of probability, which, in contrast, is a measure of the weight of empirical evidence, and is arrived at from inductive reasoning and statistical inference.

This was quite an eye opener to me when I first saw it. We take empirical testing and verification for granted, but if you were just unaware of it, what else go by to determine the "truth" of something? Scientific method is obviously not in the genes, but I bet you that obedience to authority is, even in "truth".

Experts still generally thrive on authority, not empirically demonstrated competence.

Your average bald monkey is just not that clever.

This was quite an eye opener to me when I first saw it. We take empirical testing and verification for granted, but if you were just unaware of it, what else go by to determine the "truth" of something? Scientific method is obviously not in the genes, but I bet you that obedience to authority is, even in "truth".
Experts still generally thrive on authority, not empirically demonstrated competence.

I am not a historian of science and it might be "just-so story", but it was my understanding that one of the reasons Galileo's tel... (read more)

4ChristianKl12y

Even if general beliefs are not informed, imaging a world in with MBA programs would teach the students that good experts make testable predictions. Give it a decade and having predictions is a new management fashion. [...] So we need to engineer systems that gives them that experience.

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[Link] How to see into the future (Financial Times)

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[Link] How to see into the future (Financial Times)

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