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Honestly, that sounds completely arbitrary, especially the one about 1/75. It also ignores anything that would alter any thinking person's probability calculati

by lz400 3y ago

Honestly, that sounds completely arbitrary, especially the one about 1/75. It also ignores anything that would alter any thinking person's probability calculations in the real world. For example, if tomorrow the Chinese premier says that Taiwan belongs to China and starts amassing navies, the % wouldn't change. I'd personally much _much_ rather listen to a view from some scholar or expert in the geopolitical situation than these "base rate" calculations.

valval 3y ago
It's supposed to be a completely uninformed prior. The only information, as you can see, is introduced in the formula with the above explanation. Forecasting in general is a silly affair. As a data scientist I get all kinds of requests for all kinds of predictions, and my only real job is to part those requesting parties from their money.
yorwba 3y ago
The Chinese government has been saying that Taiwan belongs to China and amassed navies every year for almost 80 years now. (Longer if you count previous governments.) Base rates are important because what you think is a highly significant trigger event that will surely have major consequences may actually be a frequent occurrence that is typically inconsequential. Or in other words, if you want to say "this time is different" and deviate from the base rate, you actually need to look at the previous times to find out whether it really is different this time, and if so, by how much.
- lz400 3y ago
  Ok, you can adjust what geopolitical event we think it's significant. Again, since I'm not an expert in the matter, I'm likely to get it wrong, as it seems I did here :) But my point stands, I'd trust expert opinion over these simplistic, falsely confident quantitative approaches.
picadores 3y ago
The percentages of democratic citizens assimilated into china would reach quiet a interesting percentage with taiwan assmiliated into the mainland. You can censor and propagandize all you want, but people who travelled or know better, just wont blieve a word of it happily ever after. One wonders what the internal "knowing" citizen rate is by now in china. The party relies on divide and conquer of uniformed fools. But the fools are in the minority by now - and the divide and conquer is one sneaky trustfall decentralized communication platform away from never working again.
__s 3y ago
I think the idea is that instead of trying to argue, just be empirical. New information would have to be added along with context on how that information has impacted odds in the past If the information is entirely new (ie, what impact does aliens taking over the Moon have on China/Taiwan) then there'll always be difficulty estimating that impact
jqmp 3y ago
This is just the base rate, not the final prediction. Your actual prediction can incorporate any information you want, but the base rate gives you a starting point and a sanity check. Also, as the article notes, scholars like Tetlock have studied the the track record of scholars and experts and found them to be less accurate than this type of approach.
- anonymous-panda 3y ago
  No, Tetlock et all have found very large crowds to outperform smaller groups of experts. This however is an article about small groups of non experts competing against each other. It’s not even blending the predictions across teams. It’s a literary sleight of hand but useful to note as it undermines the entire premise of the article. That’s because these predictions are bunk because these techniques don’t work with the stock market which uses far more rigorous statistical methods for pricing (which happened 60s-90s with the rise of quants).
- lz400 3y ago
  That's a good point. Again, even as a base rate I wonder if it's any good as it seems extremely hand wavy and arbitrary, but I can see how it being part of a multi-source approach can help.
Asraelite 3y ago
There are comments similar to this all throughout the thread. It reminds me of the movie Moneyball. Even when the numbers are clear to see, people will still much rather follow their intuition. The Oakland Athletics' insistence on sticking to the numbers anyway is what led to their enormous success, and now the same strategy is copied by sports teams around the world. It can be hard to convince people with math alone.
- lz400 3y ago
  I'm onboard with trusting data driven and numbers approach. This one just seems like a bad one if it doesn't account for how obvious actions would alter its results. But as some other comment said, maybe this base rate is not the whole story and it's just one ingredient in the total risk calculation. That makes more sense.

by lz400 3y ago

valval 3y ago

It's supposed to be a completely uninformed prior. The only information, as you can see, is introduced in the formula with the above explanation. Forecasting in general is a silly affair. As a data scientist I get all kinds of requests for all kinds of predictions, and my only real job is to part those requesting parties from their money.

yorwba 3y ago

The Chinese government has been saying that Taiwan belongs to China and amassed navies every year for almost 80 years now. (Longer if you count previous governments.) Base rates are important because what you think is a highly significant trigger event that will surely have major consequences may actually be a frequent occurrence that is typically inconsequential. Or in other words, if you want to say "this time is different" and deviate from the base rate, you actually need to look at the previous times to find out whether it really is different this time, and if so, by how much.

lz400 3y ago
Ok, you can adjust what geopolitical event we think it's significant. Again, since I'm not an expert in the matter, I'm likely to get it wrong, as it seems I did here :) But my point stands, I'd trust expert opinion over these simplistic, falsely confident quantitative approaches.

picadores 3y ago

The percentages of democratic citizens assimilated into china would reach quiet a interesting percentage with taiwan assmiliated into the mainland. You can censor and propagandize all you want, but people who travelled or know better, just wont blieve a word of it happily ever after. One wonders what the internal "knowing" citizen rate is by now in china. The party relies on divide and conquer of uniformed fools. But the fools are in the minority by now - and the divide and conquer is one sneaky trustfall decentralized communication platform away from never working again.

__s 3y ago

I think the idea is that instead of trying to argue, just be empirical. New information would have to be added along with context on how that information has impacted odds in the past If the information is entirely new (ie, what impact does aliens taking over the Moon have on China/Taiwan) then there'll always be difficulty estimating that impact

jqmp 3y ago

This is just the base rate, not the final prediction. Your actual prediction can incorporate any information you want, but the base rate gives you a starting point and a sanity check. Also, as the article notes, scholars like Tetlock have studied the the track record of scholars and experts and found them to be less accurate than this type of approach.

anonymous-panda 3y ago
No, Tetlock et all have found very large crowds to outperform smaller groups of experts. This however is an article about small groups of non experts competing against each other. It’s not even blending the predictions across teams. It’s a literary sleight of hand but useful to note as it undermines the entire premise of the article. That’s because these predictions are bunk because these techniques don’t work with the stock market which uses far more rigorous statistical methods for pricing (which happened 60s-90s with the rise of quants).
lz400 3y ago
That's a good point. Again, even as a base rate I wonder if it's any good as it seems extremely hand wavy and arbitrary, but I can see how it being part of a multi-source approach can help.

Asraelite 3y ago

There are comments similar to this all throughout the thread. It reminds me of the movie Moneyball. Even when the numbers are clear to see, people will still much rather follow their intuition. The Oakland Athletics' insistence on sticking to the numbers anyway is what led to their enormous success, and now the same strategy is copied by sports teams around the world. It can be hard to convince people with math alone.

lz400 3y ago
I'm onboard with trusting data driven and numbers approach. This one just seems like a bad one if it doesn't account for how obvious actions would alter its results. But as some other comment said, maybe this base rate is not the whole story and it's just one ingredient in the total risk calculation. That makes more sense.