Philip E. Tetlock

@PTetlock

Annenberg University Professor, Wharton & School of Arts and Sciences (Psychology & Political Science)

Joined October 2011

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  1. Jan 29

    I'm reasonably confident that Ian's "reasonable confidence" means roughly 60-80%, which is less vague than a lot of vague-verbiage forecasts. The clearer you make your forecasts, the easier it is to spot mistakes & become better calibrated

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  2. Jan 26

    Let’s lock in a mutual-admiration triad: I think very highly of both Tim’s and Matthew’s work. And we are not only complimentary. We are complementary. Read us to discover why

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  3. Retweeted
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  4. Jan 23

    Feuds between rival methods can be productive. But I see polling & prediction markets as each adding forecasting value. And here is some evidence of how these methods can complement each other:

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  5. Jan 21

    This superb article illustrates critical-reasoning skills that are also at the heart of the “superforecasting” research program. We’re all aiming at the same cognitive target:

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  6. Jan 20

    Business as usual at Davos: 1.The higher the status of forecasters, the vaguer their forecasts; 2.The more politicized the topic, the vaguer the forecasts; 3.The higher the stakes, the fewer the chances to learn from big shots' forecasting mistakes

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  7. Jan 16

    in that case, it's also "official" that the World Economic Forum needs a remedial course in Research Methods. Correlation doesn't "mean" causality--and that is even true for claims that are pitch perfect for corporate PR purposes.

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  8. Jan 13

    Memory lane: my first grad-school publication (1977) & basic finding holds up fairly well. Rising or falling integrative complexity of messaging predicts which crises escalate into violence. Credit: my first mentor, Peter Suedfeld.

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  9. Jan 8

    “Superforecasters” did so well in tournaments because our scientific competitors were allergic to the cognitive elitism of tracking above-average people into superteams. Tracking had exactly the inequality-amplifying effect that egalitarians fear tracking in schools will have

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  10. Jan 6

    Here’s a robust psychological effect that does not wilt under replication scrutiny. Kurt Lewin noticed it in the 1930s: making public commitments “freezes” attitudes in place. So saying something dumb makes you a bit dumber. It becomes harder to correct yourself. Tweeters beware.

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  11. Jan 2

    How to save lives and money: Define forecasting accuracy as skill at achieving both a high Hit rate & low False-Positive rate. It’s trivially easy to claim you can predict every recession, war,… when no one is tracking your False-Positive rate.

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  12. 29 Dec 2019

    We love turning points. Would China have grown faster, slower, or about the same in a world in which the Politburo liberals had prevailed? No one knows for sure but we can be pretty darn sure what current Politburo thinks

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  13. 29 Dec 2019

    A thoughtful effort to anticipate key themes in the 2020s. Unfortunately, its first falsifiable forecast is false. People often over-predict change (e.g., Ch. 2, Expert Political Judgment). One reason: we get more credit for correctly predicting change than the boring status quo

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  14. 28 Dec 2019

    Giant oaks from tiny acorns grow—& we still haven’t figured out how to spot which acorns will dominate our future (and we probably never will) The tweet below nails it

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  15. 22 Dec 2019

    Very readable article on a very tricky topic: when do we have good grounds for believing something?

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  16. 21 Dec 2019

    Vague-verbiage forecasts plant a jumble of probabilities in our minds that easily sum to < or > 1.0. So 2020 “could be” 1.Xi’s worst year (say 20%-80% range) year (say 10-40%) 3.a mix of successes & setbacks (say10-70%) Why not just give your best guess?

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  17. 20 Dec 2019

    It looks like cost-free tomfoolery—but it's really costly. It means alpha-pundits have no incentive to become more accurate—& lower-status challengers, who got it right sooner, have no chance to be noticed

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  18. 19 Dec 2019

    "Superforecasters" are better at tuning in signals—& tuning out noise. It’s not the millions of words had no effect. They had lots of effects, mostly tiny offsetting ones

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  19. 16 Dec 2019

    So true—but also so much easier to agree in principle than to implement in practice. We swoon to the rhetoric of open-mindedness but our true love is the comfy familiarity of closed-mindedness

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  20. 14 Dec 2019

    Stereotypical Brit under-statement: it's a great podcast. Tim teaches me how to teach (and i'm not just saying that because he occasionally teaches my stuff)

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