Thread by @IMRiskManager

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner

Week 1
#WeekendReading
#LearningTogether

https://twitter.com/IMRiskManager/status/994939746081099776

1 Forecasting is not a “you have it or you don’t” talent. It is a skill that can be cultivated.

2 The one undeniable talent that talking heads have is their skill at telling a compelling story with conviction, and that is enough.

3 It is one thing to recognize the limits on predictability, and quite another to dismiss all prediction as an exercise in futility.

4 Unpredictability and predictability coexist uneasily in the intricately interlocking systems that make up our bodies, our societies, and the cosmos.

5 More often forecasts are made and then … nothing. Accuracy is seldom determined after the fact and is almost never done with sufficient regularity and rigor that conclusions can be drawn. The reason? Mostly it’s a demand-side problem:

6 The consumers of forecasting—governments, business, and the public—don’t demand evidence of accuracy. So there is no measurement. Which means no revision. And without revision, there can be no improvement.

7 “I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition,” Bill Gates wrote. “You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.

8 You might think the goal of forecasting is to foresee the future accurately, but that’s often not the goal, or at least not the sole goal. Sometimes forecasts are meant to entertain.

9 It’s not really who they are. It is what they do. Foresight isn’t a mysterious gift bestowed at birth. It is the product of particular ways of thinking, of gathering information, of updating beliefs.

10 Superforecasting demands thinking that is open-minded, careful, curious, and—above all—self-critical. It also demands focus.

11 Commitment to self-improvement is the strongest predictor of performance.

12 We have all been too quick to make up our minds and too slow to change them. And if we don’t examine how we make these mistakes, we will keep making them.

13 Until quite recently in historical terms, it was not unusual for a sick person to be better off if there was no physician available because letting an illness take its natural course was less dangerous than what a physician would inflict.

14 A defining feature of intuitive judgment is its insensitivity to the quality of the evidence on which the judgment is based.

15 The human brain demands order. The world must make sense, which means we must be able to explain what we see and think. And we usually can—because we are creative confabulators hardwired to invent stories that impose coherence on the world.