Expert Political Judgment

"Tetlock is a professor of political science, psychology and business, and his book is terrific – funny, sharp, delightfully written. Essentially, what he did was run a series of longitudinal studies of predictions made by so-called political experts – pundits and the like. He looked at forecasts like: Would Gorbachev turn out to be a reformer or a hardliner? Would Quebec secede from Canada? Would war break out in the Horn of Africa? What he finds, as will not surprise you, is that these so-called ‘experts’ are, at least for their intended purpose, seldom more accurate than monkeys throwing darts. But what’s interesting here is that Tetlock tries to figure out what makes people better or worse at making predictions. So for instance, one thing that’s highly correlated with accuracy of forecasting is fame. But it’s inversely correlated: the more famous you are, the more you’re likely to be wrong. When you think about it, that makes sense. Being famous in this context means being a talking head, and these people are rewarded for being completely black-and-white and bombastic – hardly qualities that are conducive to accuracy. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Do you know Isaiah Berlin’s essay about Tolstoy ’s view of history, ‘The Hedgehog and The Fox’? The simple version is that the hedgehog knows one big thing and the fox knows many little things, and Tetlock borrows those categories to organise and make sense of his experts. He says, it doesn’t really matter what you think: you’re not more likely to be accurate if you’re on the left or on the right. What matters is how you think. Foxes have this sophisticated, nuanced, on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand way of thinking, and, on the whole, they’re more likely to be right. Hedgehogs are committed very powerfully to one overarching ideology, and they’re more likely to be wrong. It’s an important idea, and a humbling and useful book."