Experts, chimps and prediction
Don't know about you but I like a good expert: someone who knows stuff and can tell you what's going to happen
Sadly, as Philip Tetlock's study of several thousand specific predictions over a period of years by 284 individuals who make their living as experts shows, expert predictions are rather less valuable than we generally assume:
"The experts were less accurate in their forecasts than a control
group of chimpanzees choosing entirely randomly would have been. Even
specialists in particular narrow fields were not significantly more
successful than reasonably informed laymen. "We reach the point of
diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly
quickly," Tetlock suggested. "In this age of academic
hyperspecialisation, there is no reason for supposing that contributors
to top journals – distinguished political scientists, area study
specialists, economists and so on – are any better than attentive
readers of the New York Times in 'reading' emerging situations."
Further,
the more certain the forecaster was, the more likely his judgment would
be awry, scientific proof that "the best lack all conviction, while the
worst are full of a passionate intensity""
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