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I feel like the author intended for me to leave the article less likely to dig my heels in when acting as an expert and more likely to maintain a flexible world
by __MatrixMan__ 8y ago
I feel like the author intended for me to leave the article less likely to dig my heels in when acting as an expert and more likely to maintain a flexible worldview when making predictions in a scenario where there are a variety of well developed and contradicting predictive theories. And that's probably a good sentiment.
But I think it's important to recognize that foxes outperform hedgehogs only in scenarios where hedgehogs are available. That is, to weigh contradictory theories requires that those theories exist in the first place: and that's the work of experts.
So rather than ask: "should you be a fox or a hedgehog?"
I'm more interested in: How should foxes and hedgehogs be arranged so that the best predictions are made? How many contradictory predictive theories are necessary to let the foxes do their work and are there diminishing returns re: how deeply the hedgehogs have gone into their specialization?
Research in this direction could have implications re: how we fund other research.
- rossdavidh 8y agoPhil Tetlock, the expert on experts whose research is discussed in the article, does raise this point. He also discusses the difference between being a good predictor, and being good at raising interesting questions. There are some videos of him and a number of other smart folks here: https://www.edge.org/event/edge-master-class-2015-philip-tetlock-a-short-course-in-superforecasting https://www.edge.org/event/edge-master-class-2015-philip-tet...
- narag 8y agoFrom the article I got the impression that the experts' job was not necessarily forecasting, so the question was "are experts good at forecasting?". That doesn't mean that experts are not needed, but that there's more to forecasting than specialists.
- paultopia 8y agoThis is a truly nice point.