But that’s still a pretty disturbing result. Now, of course, that doesn’t mean that every single expert is worse than a chimp, just that the average expert is worse than a chimp. And I think the one insight that you might be most famous for is from your book, “Expert Political Judgment,” from 2005, in which you concluded that the average expert on economics or politics was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee. So now that we’ve established that we’re all forecasters, whether we realize that or not, let’s talk about some of your earlier work on how good we are at forecasting. Whenever you decide to get married or not to get married or get divorced or whatever, it rests on claims about possible futures. be giving Taiwan, what increases or decreases the likelihood of an armed conflict over Taiwan. policy on Taiwan and China, and how much aid should the U.S.

But the current debate over whether the budget bills in Congress right now are going to be inflationary or hyperinflationary or whatever people might want to claim, those are obviously competing forecasts about what will happen - with respect to inflation, inequality, government deficits, a long list of outcome variables that people are arguing about. And sometimes those assumptions are so obvious, we don’t even think of them as a forecast. Sure, virtually every consequential thing we do in the world is an implicit forecast because we’re making assumptions about what will follow later. Could you explain what that means? phil tetlock

And so, you had a nice quote in a Foreign Affairs article you co-wrote last year, where you said, every policy is a prediction. Before we dive into the weeds, Phil, I’d like to give our listeners a sense of just how central forecasting is to our society and to our lives because I think a lot of people might be thinking of it as kind of a niche interest or pastime. I’m so excited to get to talk to you again. Before we jump in, a reminder that you can always email the show with feedback or guest suggestions at My conversation with Phil Tetlock after the break. So this conversation is about why some people, like Tetlock’s superforecasters, are so much better at predicting the future than everyone else, and about the habits of mind and the ways of thinking that the rest of us can learn to become better forecasters ourselves. Yet not only did Tetlock’s group win, they were so much better than all the other teams that the government agency funding the competition decided to kick everyone else out and just study Tetlock’s best forecasters, whom he dubbed the “superforecasters.”

who had access to classified information. Tetlock’s group consisted of amateurs with nothing but an internet connection, who agreed to make predictions in their spare time.Īnd they were going head to head against not only other teams, but also the highly trained career intelligence analysts from the C.I.A. In 2011, he entered a team in a competition sponsored by the US government in which participants were asked to make forecasts about questions like, how long will the Syrian civil war last, and is Greece going to leave the eurozone, putting numerical probabilities on their guesses from 0% to 100%. And that’s because at the center of his work is a question that humans have been trying to answer for as long as the history of civilization - how can we predict the future more accurately?Īnd Tetlock isn’t just an ivory tower academic here. In my view, Tetlock is doing some of the most important research in social science today, research that has the potential to revolutionize how we run our organizations, how we make consequential policy decisions, and how we live our everyday lives.

He’s also the author of several books, including the 2015 bestseller, “Super Forecasting, The Art and Science of Prediction,” co-authored with Dan Gardner. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor of management at the Wharton School.

This week is Julia Galef, the host of the great “Rationally Speaking” podcast and author of the book “The Scout Mindset.” Julia is unusually good at thinking about thinking, so this should be a lot of fun. While I’m on paternity leave, we’ve got an all-star team of guest hosts. I’m Ezra Klein, and this is “The Ezra Klein Show.” The psychologist Philip Tetlock on the art and science of prediction.

Transcript Predicting the Future Is Possible.

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