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Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Philip E. Tetlock on Forecasting and Foraging as a Fox

22 Apr 2020 29 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Philip E. TetlockTyler Cowen

Claim mix

belief 15evaluation 8uncertainty 3recommendation 1prediction 1commitment 1

Evidence policy

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Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

29 published records

03 / belief

I think a lot of good executives have the intuition that you get more out of a team of forecasters or problem solvers if you elicit independent judgments initially that are uncontaminated by conformity pressure, and then you create an environment in which ideas can be freely critiqued before lifting the veil of anonymity and letting people see who’s taking which positions.

“I think a lot of good executives have the intuition that you get more out of a team of forecasters or problem solvers if you elicit independent judgments initially that are uncontaminated by conformity pressure, and then you create an environment in which ideas can be freely critiqued before lifting the veil of anonymity and letting people see who’s taking which positions.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / belief

I think he thought I was probably bright enough to do well, and he probably thought that I was contrarian and weird enough that there was some possibility of doing something distinctively well.

“I think he thought I was probably bright enough to do well, and he probably thought that I was contrarian and weird enough that there was some possibility of doing something distinctively well.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

06 / belief

I think Danny Kahneman who’s not known as an optimist, proposed it. It sounds like an optimistic idea, but I think he’s not all that optimistic about what it can achieve on close inspection.

“I think Danny Kahneman who’s not known as an optimist, proposed it. It sounds like an optimistic idea, but I think he’s not all that optimistic about what it can achieve on close inspection.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

07 / belief

I’ve always resonated a little more to the foxes than to the hedgehogs, but I think when you look at the great achievements in science, they often come from hedgehogs.

“I’ve always resonated a little more to the foxes than to the hedgehogs, but I think when you look at the great achievements in science, they often come from hedgehogs.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

08 / belief

I think everything we know, from the overlap between superforecasting and intelligence and the overlap between intelligence and success in many different professional lines of work, would suggests that that’s almost certainly true.

“I think everything we know, from the overlap between superforecasting and intelligence and the overlap between intelligence and success in many different professional lines of work, would suggests that that’s almost certainly true.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / belief

People thought that we were borderline insane. But we left for very personal reasons, and without going into what those were, I would say Philadelphia has been a moderately pleasant surprise.

“People thought that we were borderline insane. But we left for very personal reasons, and without going into what those were, I would say Philadelphia has been a moderately pleasant surprise.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

14 / belief

I think you’d want an interdisciplinary team. Diversity is one of these words that’s been reduced to a cliché, but we have found in our work that cognitive diversity helps, and it helps in certain quite well-defined ways.

“I think you’d want an interdisciplinary team. Diversity is one of these words that’s been reduced to a cliché, but we have found in our work that cognitive diversity helps, and it helps in certain quite well-defined ways.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / belief

Insofar as we can improve the standards of evidence of proof in judging counterfactual claims as well as conditional forecasts and linking the two, I think there’s a potential for improving the quality of debates among interested parties.

“Insofar as we can improve the standards of evidence of proof in judging counterfactual claims as well as conditional forecasts and linking the two, I think there’s a potential for improving the quality of debates among interested parties.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

16 / belief

I think humans have been repeatedly humbled in competitions against simple statistical algorithms, going back to Paul Meehl’s famous little book on clinical versus actuarial approaches to predicting in medicine and psychiatry.

“I think humans have been repeatedly humbled in competitions against simple statistical algorithms, going back to Paul Meehl’s famous little book on clinical versus actuarial approaches to predicting in medicine and psychiatry.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

19 / belief

I think probably my advisor — University of British Columbia — Peter Suedfeld who supported me and believed in me when there didn’t seem to be very many good reasons for doing so.

“I think probably my advisor — University of British Columbia — Peter Suedfeld who supported me and believed in me when there didn’t seem to be very many good reasons for doing so.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / evaluation

What do you think of the argument that science only exists at all Because most scientists are overconfident that if they were rational Bayesians, they would just latch onto the opinions of the smartest and best-trained people before them.

“What do you think of the argument that science only exists at all Because most scientists are overconfident that if they were rational Bayesians, they would just latch onto the opinions of the smartest and best-trained people before them.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / evaluation

I think that we look to forecasters for ideological reassurance, we look to forecasters for entertainment, and we look to forecasters for minimizing regret functions of various sorts.

“I think that we look to forecasters for ideological reassurance, we look to forecasters for entertainment, and we look to forecasters for minimizing regret functions of various sorts.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / evaluation

I think there’s a good deal of similarity in the cognitive ability, cognitive-style profiles of superforecasters and the kinds of people you see on the staffs of Goldman Sachs.

“I think there’s a good deal of similarity in the cognitive ability, cognitive-style profiles of superforecasters and the kinds of people you see on the staffs of Goldman Sachs.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

24 / prediction

David Epstein, the guy who recently wrote Range, a very interesting guy — you may have had him on your show, I don’t know — but he recently quoted himself from a 2007 newsletter that he wrote, and he said something like, “The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-like viruses among horseshoe bats, combined with a culture of eating exotic meat, is a time bomb.

“David Epstein, the guy who recently wrote Range, a very interesting guy — you may have had him on your show, I don’t know — but he recently quoted himself from a 2007 newsletter that he wrote, and he said something like, “The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-like viruses among horseshoe bats, combined with a culture of eating exotic meat, is a time bomb.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

25 / evaluation

I certainly have been guilty of overconfidence at many junctures in my career, thinking I’m going to be able to take on things that looked impossible and often turned out to be impossible. Most projects that most scientists embark on, I think, don’t succeed.

“I certainly have been guilty of overconfidence at many junctures in my career, thinking I’m going to be able to take on things that looked impossible and often turned out to be impossible. Most projects that most scientists embark on, I think, don’t succeed.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

27 / evaluation

I think one reason they may be interested in forecasting tournaments is because forecasting tournaments incentivize people to do one thing and only one thing, and that’s accuracy.

“I think one reason they may be interested in forecasting tournaments is because forecasting tournaments incentivize people to do one thing and only one thing, and that’s accuracy.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

28 / evaluation

I started as an experimental psychologist, and history looks very different, but they can be connected because historical judgment is something that psychologists study to some degree.

“I started as an experimental psychologist, and history looks very different, but they can be connected because historical judgment is something that psychologists study to some degree.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

29 / commitment

[laughs] We play with prediction markets with the work with the intelligence community, going all the way back to Admiral Poindexter and the original DARPA effort to launch prediction markets inside the intelligence community.

“[laughs] We play with prediction markets with the work with the intelligence community, going all the way back to Admiral Poindexter and the original DARPA effort to launch prediction markets inside the intelligence community.”
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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