Saturday, December 22, 2018

Why Good Forecasters Become Better People

It is only a modest oversimplification to summarise Prof Tetlock’s results using the late William Goldman’s aphorism: nobody knows anything.

Yet Profs Mellers, Tetlock and Don Moore then ran a larger forecasting tournament and discovered that a small number of people seem to be able to forecast better than the rest of us. These so-called superforecasters are not necessarily subject-matter experts, but they tend to be proactively open-minded, always looking for contrary evidence or opinions.

There are certain mental virtues, then, that make people better forecasters. The new research turns the question around: might trying to become a better forecaster strengthen such mental virtues? In particular, might it make us less polarised in our political views?


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