Quotes from Philip Tetlock

The explanatory urge is mostly a good thing. Indeed, it is the propulsive force behind all human efforts to comprehend reality. The problem is that we move too fast from confusion and uncertainty ("I have no idea why my hand is pointed at a picture of a shovel") to a clear and confident conclusion ("Oh, that's simple") without spending any time in between ("This is one possible explanation but there are others").

Kudlow was optimistic. "There is no recession," he wrote. "In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.

Snap judgments are sometimes essential. As Daniel Kahneman puts it, "System 1 is designed to jump to conclusions from little evidence."13

You see the shadow. Snap! You are frightened—and running. That's the "availability heuristic," one of many System 1 operations—or heuristics—discovered by Daniel Kahneman, his collaborator Amos Tversky, and other researchers in the fast-growing science of judgment and choice.

Accurate forecasts may help do that sometimes, and when they do accuracy is welcome, but it is pushed aside if that's what the pursuit of power requires.

The politicians would be blind men arguing over the colors of the rainbow. If the government had subjected its policy "to a randomized controlled trial then we might, by now, have known its true worth and be some way ahead in our thinking," Cochrane observed.

This is a big reason for the "skeptic" half of my "optimistic skeptic" stance. We live in a world where the actions of one nearly powerless man can have ripple effects around the world—ripples that affect us all to varying degrees.

Unpredictability and predictability coexist uneasily in the intricately interlocking systems that make up our bodies, our societies, and the cosmos. How predictable something is depends on what we are trying to predict, how far into the future, and under what circumstances.

Politics and the English Language," George Orwell concluded with six emphatic rules, including "never use a long word where a short one will do" and "never use the passive where you can use the active.

Laws of physics aside, there are no universal constants, so separating the predictable from the unpredictable is difficult work. There's no way around it.

For those who hope that we can become collectively wiser, it was a bewildering fracas that looked less like a debate between great minds and more like a food fight between rival fraternities.

what makes these superforecasters so good. 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. These habits of thought can be learned and cultivated

They are all men (always men) of strong conviction and profound trust in their own judgement.

There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.

The iPhone alone now generates more revenue than all of Microsoft.

If we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that unless we rid ourselves of our nuclear arsenals a holocaust not only might occur but will occur," wrote Jonathan Schell in his influential book The Fate of the Earth, "if not today, then tomorrow; if not this year, then the next.

two hundred studies—has shown that in most cases statistical algorithms beat subjective judgment, and in the handful of studies where they don't, they usually tie. Given that algorithms are quick and cheap, unlike subjective judgment, a tie supports using the algorithm. The point is now indisputable: when you have a well-validated statistical algorithm, use it

history hit a curve, and as Karl Marx once quipped, when that happens, the intellectuals fall off.

Call me an "optimistic skeptic.

WE ARE ALL forecasters. When we think about changing jobs, getting married, buying a home, making an investment, launching a product, or retiring, we decide based on how we expect the future will unfold. These expectations are forecasts. Often we do our own forecasting.

So finding meaning in events is positively correlated with wellbeing but negatively correlated with foresight.

forecast Steve Ballmer made in 2007, when he was CEO of Microsoft: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.

warrior-poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

superforecasting demands thinking that is open-minded, careful, curious, and—above all—self-critical. It also demands focus. The kind of thinking that produces superior judgment does not come effortlessly. Only the determined can deliver it reasonably consistently, which is why our analyses have consistently found commitment to self-improvement to be the strongest predictor of performance.