Subtle thing: being unsurprised by an outcome is not the same as having predicted the outcome. Not being surprised could mean either that you forecast a narrative spread or that you’re indifferent across a spread. Suprisal is a function of how much and how precisely you care.
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Often people are unsurprised by an outcome in a broadly religious sense as in “it’s always the worst people who come out on top” or “the indomitable human spirit always prevails”
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An interesting tell is when people “mark their expectations to market” at some sort of narrative turn rather than at a specific point in time. This creates especially tautological outcomes.
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For eg. markets always cycle through booms and busts. Saying “gravity prevailed, haha” right after a crash is tautology sampling. Certain conditions will *always* occur periodically. If you merely note them as unsurprising validation when they appear, you’re not saying much.
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Nah, not subtweeting you actually. Yiu make real predictions with overconfidence. Your phrase just reminded me of another kind of pseudo predictor.
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i would agree that it has to be more about hindsight bias than anything else
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People often say that something doesn't surprise them, which lets them kind of pretend that they predicted it, without making that explicit and having people demand receipts.
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