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This is the most dangerously stupid thing I've ever heard. Tetlock is a known academic charlatan pushing his absolutely useless "superforecasting" nonsense whic

This is the most dangerously stupid thing I've ever heard. Tetlock is a known academic charlatan pushing his absolutely useless "superforecasting" nonsense which @nntaleb keeps debunking on Twitter. If Tetlock and friends are so good about forecasting the future, why didn't they predict and warn us about COVID-19 BEFORE @nntaleb and friends (including myself) did? P.S. I have been downvoted for saying this.

cl42 6y ago
I think you’re partially right. However, it also depends on what you’re comparing to and what the baseline is. There are lots of projects that try to predict the future and using a framework to do so in a systematic way that can improve over time with feedback is really valuable. That part resonates with me. I do agree that keeping this high level and abstract (scenario planning + probabilistic estimates) isn’t necessarily doing them any favours. Their book on the topic is better, and I do appreciate their argument that it’s not about being a perfect predictor of the future, but simply better than what we have today.
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  You cannot fundamentally predict the future, fuhgedaboutit, partly for the same reasons we cannot use Turing machines to solve the halting problem for Turing machines. What you can do, however, is control your exposure to outcomes of unpredictable events. You don't know when a pandemic will hit, but you know it is is matter of time, just like getting hacked. So prepare and design accordingly. Simple. No need for this superforecasting nonsense which doesn't even work.
  - cl42 6y ago
    They would actually argue the same thing. Certain events are impossible to predict. Other events are not. That’s part of the beauty of the problem. You need to be able to pick the right events to predict and ensure the event is well-defined enough to actually test. Your own examples of why this wouldn’t work are exactly what they discuss as the problem... Eventually a lot of forecasts are correct; what governments, companies, and leaders need are forecasts that are time bound, as that’s how they plan.
    - trishankkarthik 6y ago
      Show me the money: did they warn about COVID-19 way BEFORE it be came a problem, or did they not? If not, why should we take them seriously? It is easy to prognosticate AFTER the fact.
      - _jahh 6y ago
        not seeing one crisis doesn't mean they aren't better than chance. Also do you know that they didn't make some accurate prediction of XX% of a pandemic that was born out in this situation? No one is claiming to have a literal crystal ball.
      - jacques_chester 6y ago
        This argument relies on the nirvana fallacy. "You are not perfectly clairvoyant, therefore prediction is worthless". I recall, but cannot locate, that questions related to the outbreak of trans-species respiratory illnesses from China have been canvassed in the past. It does appear that the US intelligence community expected a pandemic to emerge: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/16/analysis-yes-people-did-foresee-this-pandemic-happening/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/16/analysis-yes-people-d...
jacques_chester 6y ago
Taleb has anecdotes and insults. Tetlock has data piled on data.
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  IDK how many more times I have to repeat this before it gets through your head that one warned about the pandemic blowing up before it happened, therefore only one can be taken seriously. You don't need evidence to run away when someone shouts that a bear is coming your way.
  - jacques_chester 6y ago
    "There will be a pandemic" is a prediction with 100% accuracy. Any rare event, as Taleb likes to hang his entire career on, will eventually happen. But such a prediction is basically worthless without a horizon. Information about when a pandemic happens affects what actions have to be made to deal with it. Pandemics that definitely happen tomorrow require far more expensive and disruptive actions than ones happening sometime in the next decade with gradually increasing probability. Tetlock's work is about people who actually have to define a date and for whom the deciding measurements are objective. You can't just say "a pandemic!", you have to say "a pandemic is declared by WHO on or before January 1st, 2019". In fact, Tetlock's data undermines Taleb's entire thesis that dramatic events are systematically under-predicted. He showed that dramatic scenarios are over-predicted by experts. They have higher emotional salience, and history that is taught focuses on dramatic, outlier events because of their disproportionate impact. Due to availability bias and hindsight bias, experts typically predict that dramatic events will happen more frequently than they actually do. Such predictions are regularly roflstomped by hilariously simple forecasting methods like "yesterday's weather" or fitting a line on a handful of data points. As I said earlier: Taleb has anecdotes and insults. Tetlock has data.
enkid 6y ago
When did anyone predict COVID? You can just throw around assertions that someone predicted something like COVID without providing evidence and expect people to make judgements on it.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Predicted by experts: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/experts-warned-pandemic-decades-ago-why-not-ready-for-coronavirus/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/experts-w...
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  Haven't heard of Google or Twitter before, have you?
civilized 6y ago
You could be right, but I've people-watched on Twitter long enough to know that "person who insults those he disagrees with while name-dropping @nntaleb" is an entire PERSONALITY, one that I take approximately 0% seriously.
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  Not a criticism if the worst you can say about someone is that he is "mean," not that he is wrong.
  - civilized 6y ago
    Taleb has deep insights about some things, is laughably ignorant on other things, and doesn't seem to know which is which. His followers definitely don't.
    - aaron695 6y ago
      > Taleb has deep insights about some things I'll bite, what? I know he's rich and successful, so he has deeper insights than most. But it doesn't mean he teaches them, as far I can see he just uses them. For instance he's very good at doublespeak.
tim333 6y ago
Thanks for the context. I was trying to figure what was noteworthy about an article saying we should think ahead which I kind of assumed we did anyway. Though I think "most dangerously stupid thing I've ever heard" is maybe an exaggeration. The US govt effectively banning coronavirus testing back in Feb kind of sticks out in my mind as outstanding on that front (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...)
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  Thanks, yes, I try to write in a way where even I don't fall asleep, unlike our "nirvana fallacy" friend below...
dang 6y ago
If you're being downvoted it's probably for fulminating, which the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html You may not owe authors whom you feel are charlatans better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it.
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  I don't owe the community anything.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 6y ago
    You do if you want to keep posting here. Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines a lot lately. Comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772993 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772982 are not ok. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules? I don't want to ban you, but we can't have people throwing their weight around and attacking others like this.
    - trishankkarthik 6y ago
      How was I "attacking" others, when they were allowed to put words in my mouth? Go ahead and ban me: @paulgraham and @sama were right about the intolerance of free speech in Silicon Valley.
      - tomhoward 6y ago
        Hey there, I’m a longtime Taleb follower (Antifragile was life-changing for me), and I watched him and you and others in your crew commentate on the pandemic and found it highly beneficial for understanding the scenario. I’d consider it a great shame if there were no place for you here. But this attack on dang misses the mark badly. pg and sama have always been fully supportive of the way he runs HN (pg hand-picked him to take it over, sama was YC CEO for most of the time since, and they've both repeatedly endorsed him and his HN work publicly [1], including recently in pg's case [2]). dang’s approach to moderation makes it more conducive to free speech, as, unlike on Twitter, it allows difficult/complex topics to be discussed without being derailed by personal insults. We don’t need to attack people here; we have the downvote arrow and flag link for when people are being assholes, otherwise we can just focus on presenting persuasive arguments. [1] https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/ [2] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282055086433284103 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282055086433284103

cl42 6y ago

I think you’re partially right. However, it also depends on what you’re comparing to and what the baseline is. There are lots of projects that try to predict the future and using a framework to do so in a systematic way that can improve over time with feedback is really valuable. That part resonates with me. I do agree that keeping this high level and abstract (scenario planning + probabilistic estimates) isn’t necessarily doing them any favours. Their book on the topic is better, and I do appreciate their argument that it’s not about being a perfect predictor of the future, but simply better than what we have today.

trishankkarthik 6y ago
You cannot fundamentally predict the future, fuhgedaboutit, partly for the same reasons we cannot use Turing machines to solve the halting problem for Turing machines. What you can do, however, is control your exposure to outcomes of unpredictable events. You don't know when a pandemic will hit, but you know it is is matter of time, just like getting hacked. So prepare and design accordingly. Simple. No need for this superforecasting nonsense which doesn't even work.
- cl42 6y ago
  They would actually argue the same thing. Certain events are impossible to predict. Other events are not. That’s part of the beauty of the problem. You need to be able to pick the right events to predict and ensure the event is well-defined enough to actually test. Your own examples of why this wouldn’t work are exactly what they discuss as the problem... Eventually a lot of forecasts are correct; what governments, companies, and leaders need are forecasts that are time bound, as that’s how they plan.
  - trishankkarthik 6y ago
    Show me the money: did they warn about COVID-19 way BEFORE it be came a problem, or did they not? If not, why should we take them seriously? It is easy to prognosticate AFTER the fact.
    - _jahh 6y ago
      not seeing one crisis doesn't mean they aren't better than chance. Also do you know that they didn't make some accurate prediction of XX% of a pandemic that was born out in this situation? No one is claiming to have a literal crystal ball.
    - jacques_chester 6y ago
      This argument relies on the nirvana fallacy. "You are not perfectly clairvoyant, therefore prediction is worthless". I recall, but cannot locate, that questions related to the outbreak of trans-species respiratory illnesses from China have been canvassed in the past. It does appear that the US intelligence community expected a pandemic to emerge: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/16/analysis-yes-people-did-foresee-this-pandemic-happening/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/16/analysis-yes-people-d...

jacques_chester 6y ago

Taleb has anecdotes and insults. Tetlock has data piled on data.

trishankkarthik 6y ago
IDK how many more times I have to repeat this before it gets through your head that one warned about the pandemic blowing up before it happened, therefore only one can be taken seriously. You don't need evidence to run away when someone shouts that a bear is coming your way.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  "There will be a pandemic" is a prediction with 100% accuracy. Any rare event, as Taleb likes to hang his entire career on, will eventually happen. But such a prediction is basically worthless without a horizon. Information about when a pandemic happens affects what actions have to be made to deal with it. Pandemics that definitely happen tomorrow require far more expensive and disruptive actions than ones happening sometime in the next decade with gradually increasing probability. Tetlock's work is about people who actually have to define a date and for whom the deciding measurements are objective. You can't just say "a pandemic!", you have to say "a pandemic is declared by WHO on or before January 1st, 2019". In fact, Tetlock's data undermines Taleb's entire thesis that dramatic events are systematically under-predicted. He showed that dramatic scenarios are over-predicted by experts. They have higher emotional salience, and history that is taught focuses on dramatic, outlier events because of their disproportionate impact. Due to availability bias and hindsight bias, experts typically predict that dramatic events will happen more frequently than they actually do. Such predictions are regularly roflstomped by hilariously simple forecasting methods like "yesterday's weather" or fitting a line on a handful of data points. As I said earlier: Taleb has anecdotes and insults. Tetlock has data.

enkid 6y ago

When did anyone predict COVID? You can just throw around assertions that someone predicted something like COVID without providing evidence and expect people to make judgements on it.

mensetmanusman 6y ago
Predicted by experts: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/experts-warned-pandemic-decades-ago-why-not-ready-for-coronavirus/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/experts-w...
trishankkarthik 6y ago
Haven't heard of Google or Twitter before, have you?

civilized 6y ago

You could be right, but I've people-watched on Twitter long enough to know that "person who insults those he disagrees with while name-dropping @nntaleb" is an entire PERSONALITY, one that I take approximately 0% seriously.

trishankkarthik 6y ago
Not a criticism if the worst you can say about someone is that he is "mean," not that he is wrong.
- civilized 6y ago
  Taleb has deep insights about some things, is laughably ignorant on other things, and doesn't seem to know which is which. His followers definitely don't.
  - aaron695 6y ago
    > Taleb has deep insights about some things I'll bite, what? I know he's rich and successful, so he has deeper insights than most. But it doesn't mean he teaches them, as far I can see he just uses them. For instance he's very good at doublespeak.

tim333 6y ago

Thanks for the context. I was trying to figure what was noteworthy about an article saying we should think ahead which I kind of assumed we did anyway. Though I think "most dangerously stupid thing I've ever heard" is maybe an exaggeration. The US govt effectively banning coronavirus testing back in Feb kind of sticks out in my mind as outstanding on that front (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...)

trishankkarthik 6y ago
Thanks, yes, I try to write in a way where even I don't fall asleep, unlike our "nirvana fallacy" friend below...

dang 6y ago

If you're being downvoted it's probably for fulminating, which the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html You may not owe authors whom you feel are charlatans better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it.

trishankkarthik 6y ago
I don't owe the community anything.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  You do if you want to keep posting here. Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines a lot lately. Comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772993 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24772982 are not ok. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules? I don't want to ban you, but we can't have people throwing their weight around and attacking others like this.
  - trishankkarthik 6y ago
    How was I "attacking" others, when they were allowed to put words in my mouth? Go ahead and ban me: @paulgraham and @sama were right about the intolerance of free speech in Silicon Valley.
    - tomhoward 6y ago
      Hey there, I’m a longtime Taleb follower (Antifragile was life-changing for me), and I watched him and you and others in your crew commentate on the pandemic and found it highly beneficial for understanding the scenario. I’d consider it a great shame if there were no place for you here. But this attack on dang misses the mark badly. pg and sama have always been fully supportive of the way he runs HN (pg hand-picked him to take it over, sama was YC CEO for most of the time since, and they've both repeatedly endorsed him and his HN work publicly [1], including recently in pg's case [2]). dang’s approach to moderation makes it more conducive to free speech, as, unlike on Twitter, it allows difficult/complex topics to be discussed without being derailed by personal insults. We don’t need to attack people here; we have the downvote arrow and flag link for when people are being assholes, otherwise we can just focus on presenting persuasive arguments. [1] https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/ [2] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282055086433284103 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282055086433284103