Superforecasting Quotes

“Accurate forecasts may help do that sometimes, and when they do accuracy is welcome, but it is pushed aside if that’s what the pursuit of power requires.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“no plan survives contact with the enemy.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength,”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously observed, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“What do you do, sir?”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“So finding meaning in events is positively correlated with wellbeing but negatively correlated with foresight.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Aleatory uncertainty is something you not only don’t know; it is unknowable.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Epistemic uncertainty is something you don’t know but is, at least in theory, knowable.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“a distinction that philosophers have proposed between “epistemic” and “aleatory” uncertainty.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Quit pretending you know things you don’t and start running experiments.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Uncertainty is real,” Byers writes. “It is the dream of total certainty”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“was one of the worst—arguably the worst—intelligence failure in modern history.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Mauboussin notes that slow regression is more often seen in activities dominated by skill, while faster regression is more associated with chance.15”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Kudlow was optimistic. “There is no recession,” he wrote. “In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Then came the waiting, a test of patience for even the tenured.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“history hit a curve, and as Karl Marx once quipped, when that happens, the intellectuals fall off.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“If we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that unless we rid ourselves of our nuclear arsenals a holocaust not only might occur but will occur,” wrote Jonathan Schell in his influential book The Fate of the Earth, “if not today, then tomorrow; if not this year, then the next.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“The iPhone alone now generates more revenue than all of Microsoft.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

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

“The politicians would be blind men arguing over the colors of the rainbow. If the government had subjected its policy “to a randomized controlled trial then we might, by now, have known its true worth and be some way ahead in our thinking,” Cochrane observed.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“Doubt is not a fearful thing,” Feynman observed, “but a thing of very great value.”10 It’s what propels science forward. When the scientist tells you he does not know the answer, he is an ignorant man. When he tells you he has a hunch about how it is going to work, he is uncertain about it. When he is pretty sure of how it is going to work, and he tells you, “This is the way it’s going to work, I’ll bet,” he still is in some doubt. And it is of paramount importance, in order to make progress, that we recognize this ignorance and this doubt. Because we have the doubt, we then propose looking in new directions for new ideas. The rate of the development of science is not the rate at which you make observations alone but, much more important, the rate at which you create new things to test.”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“two hundred studies—has shown that in most cases statistical algorithms beat subjective judgment, and in the handful of studies where they don’t, they usually tie. Given that algorithms are quick and cheap, unlike subjective judgment, a tie supports using the algorithm. The point is now indisputable: when you have a well-validated statistical algorithm, use it”
― Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction