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I agree, but that doesn't make the "old data" problem go away. It's worth noticing that in the first part (Paul Saffo forecasting), the problem is all in one h
by netcan 6y ago
I agree, but that doesn't make the "old data" problem go away.
It's worth noticing that in the first part (Paul Saffo forecasting), the problem is all in one head. Saffo recognizes an unintuitive methodology: strong opinions weakly held. He's only really dealing with himself, his intuitions, tactics that work for him.
The second part gets social:
"you’ve decided, along with your boss, to build a particular type of product for a particular subsection of the self-service checkout market."
This is a good example, imo. These decisions are made with imperfect information, and they incorporate a lot of interlocking opinions. Ex ante can only get you so far. You need to make a decision and start rowing to progress, change paths when necessary.
Multiple people are involved. Credibility is on the line, among many subtle subroutines of group psychology that we aren't even aware of. The solution from Tetlock, express your opinion as a probability, is a solution to the problem in its group form. When people are in meetings making big decisions, a lot more than the big decisions is going on. Human power dynamics are taking place. Being right can play a very small role in these.
I think the author has a blindspot. "This is not how the human brain works" is one kind of challenge. "This is not how human groups work" is another. It isn't a derivative of the first.
- marcinzm 6y ago>Multiple people are involved. Credibility is on the line, among many subtle subroutines of group psychology that we aren't even aware of. The solution from Tetlock, express your opinion as a probability, is a solution to the problem in its group form. When people are in meetings making big decisions, a lot more than the big decisions is going on. Human power dynamics are taking place. Being right can play a very small role in these. Except expressing it in a probability form doesn't remove the group dynamics problem but rather makes it worse I feel. Or rather you're back to square one and gain little. The probability is no longer your confidence but the number you need to give to satisfy group dynamics. Not too high or you may be punished if the view turns out wrong. Also not one that disagrees with the people in charge too much. The original approach implicitly argues that without power dynamics you make better decisions.
- solidasparagus 6y agoProbability really doesn't help in a group context. In most cases you are pulling a number out of your ass, people don't have intuitive understanding of probability* , and it implies a level of certainty in the likelihood of an outcome that doesn't exist (which leads to bad decisions because you are building on a faulty basis). *look at how many people consider Trump's election impossible when the odds clearly indicated he had a non-negligible chance of success.
- smileypete 6y agoMaybe a deliberate focus on having some 'out of band' information would help, as an antidote to group-think. A good example would be the early attitudes to face masking from the governments, medical experts, and media of certain countries. Some recognition and consideration of the deep experience and expertise of medical experts in Asia countries where SARS occured could surely have saved many lives.