Superforecasting Quotes

“Predictably, psychologists who test police officers’ ability to spot lies in a controlled setting find a big gap between their confidence and their skill. And that gap grows as officers become more experienced and they assume, not unreasonably, that their experience has made them better lie detectors. As a result, officers grow confident faster than they grow accurate, meaning they grow increasingly overconfident.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“My research collaborator Don Moore points out that police officers spend a lot of time figuring out who is telling the truth and who is lying, but research has found they aren’t nearly as good at it as they think they are and they tend not to get better with experience. That’s because experience isn’t enough. It must be accompanied by clear feedback.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Stock prices do not always reflect the true value of companies, so an investor should study a company thoroughly and really understand its business, capital, and management when deciding whether it had sufficient underlying value to make an investment for the long term worthwhile.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell concluded with six emphatic rules, including “never use a long word where a short one will do” and “never use the passive where you can use the active.” But the sixth rule was the key: “Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“A forecaster who doesn’t adjust her views in light of new information won’t capture the value of that information, while a forecaster who is so impressed by the new information that he bases his forecast entirely on it will lose the value of the old information that underpinned his prior forecast. But the forecaster who carefully balances old and new captures the value in both—and puts it into her new forecast. The best way to do that is by updating often but bit by bit.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Plans are merely a platform for change. Israeli Defense Forces.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“An imperfect decision made in time was better than a perfect decision made too late. Ref. German mission command.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Social psychologists have long known that getting people to publicly commit to a belief is a great way to freeze it in place, making it resistant to change. The stronger the commitment, the greater the resistance.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“As ideologically diverse as they were, they were united by the fact that their thinking was so ideological. They sought to squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates and treated what did not fit as irrelevant distractions”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Knowledge is something we can all increase, but only slowly. People who haven’t stayed mentally active have little hope of catching up to lifelong learners.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Whether intuition generates delusion or insight depends on whether you work in a world full of valid cues you can unconsciously register for future use. “For example, it is very likely that there are early indications that a building is about to collapse in a fire or that an infant will soon show obvious symptoms of infection,” Kahneman and Klein wrote. “On the other hand, it is unlikely that there is publicly available information that could be used to predict how well a particular stock will do—if such valid information existed, the price of the stock would already reflect it. Thus, we have more reason to trust the intuition of an experienced fireground commander about the stability of a building, or the intuitions of a nurse about an infant, than to trust the intuitions of a stock broker.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“For centuries, it hobbled progress in medicine. When physicians finally accepted that their experience and perceptions were not reliable means of determining whether a treatment works, they turned to scientific testing—and medicine finally started to make rapid advances. The same revolution needs to happen in forecasting.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Foresight isn’t a mysterious gift bestowed at birth. It is the product of particular ways of thinking, of gathering information, of updating beliefs.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“The truth is, the truth is elusive.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition,” Bill Gates wrote. “You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal….”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“If we are serious about measuring and improving, this won’t do. Forecasts must have clearly defined terms and timelines. They must use numbers. And one more thing is essential: we must have lots of forecasts.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“In fact, in science, the best evidence that a hypothesis is true is often an experiment designed to prove the hypothesis is false, but which fails to do so.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal….This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“although we have a substantial body of evidence to support this conclusion, and we hold it with a high degree of confidence, it remains possible, albeit extremely improbable, that new evidence or arguments may compel us to revise our view of this matter.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Amount of luck in tournament determines amount of regression to the mean from one year to the next.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Carol”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“So a leader must possess unwavering determination to overcome obstacles and accomplish his goals—while remaining open to the possibility that he may have to throw out the plan and try something else. That’s a lot to ask of anyone, but the German military saw it as the essence of the leader’s role. “Once a course of action has been initiated it must not be abandoned without overriding reason,” the Wehrmacht manual stated. “In the changing situations of combat, however, inflexibly clinging to a course of action can lead to failure. The art of leadership consists of the timely recognition of circumstances and of the moment when a new decision is required.”7”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“We have all been too quick to make up our minds and too slow to change them”
― Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“So finding meaning in events is positively correlated with wellbeing but negatively correlated with foresight. That sets up a depressing possibility: Is misery the price of accuracy?”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“tip-of-your-nose delusions can fool anyone, even the best and the brightest—perhaps especially the best and the brightest.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“For conservatives too the explanation was obvious: Reagan had called the Soviets’ bluff by upping the arms-race ante and now Gorbachev was folding. It”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) liberalized”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“A defining feature of intuitive judgment is its insensitivity to the quality of the evidence on which the judgment is based.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction