http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jan/04/financial-crisis-anxiety
[...] "In times like these, everyone should have a book by their bedside to reach for at three in the morning. If the Bible doesn't work for you, Philip Tetlock's nicely oxymoronic volume Expert Political Judgment might be an alternative. Tetlock's book is based on two decades of research into 284 people who made their living "commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends". He asked them simply to do what they apparently did best: predict what would happen in the world next in answer to specific questions. Would oil prices rise or fall, would there be a boom or a bust, would we go to war? And so on. When the study concluded, in 2003, Tetlock's experts had made 82,361 forecasts and the results were correlated with the facts as they had turned out. 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"." Alchemists Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : w...@wtgab.demon.co.uk Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ “Babies are born every day without an iPod. We will get there.” - Adam Sohn, the head of public relations for Microsoft’s Zune division. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
