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A Better Crystal Ball?

foreignaffairs.com

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Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#21

Post by jessriedel »

vosper wrote: post #8

> Well-calibrated forecasters, for instance, can estimate the likelihood that a skirmish with the Chinese navy in the South China Sea will result in at least two American deaths by December 31. But what policymakers really want to know is the extent to which China will threaten U.S. interests in the coming years and decades. This has never happened (a skirmish, let alone deaths) so how can we think that the forecaste…

There's strong empirical evidence that prediction ability cross generalizes. That is, if a person is good at predicting unrelated topics A, B, and C, they are also like to be good at topic D.

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#22

Post by arthurcolle »

cl42 wrote: post #2

I’ve been doing something similar for investing in stocks and it has worked well. I’m exploring building an NLP-powered version of this (based on crawling news events). If anyone is interested in chatting or collaborating, let me know. :)

I'm working on this space as well. Would love to collaborate.

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#23

Post by cl42 »

arthurcolle wrote: post #22
cl42 wrote: post #2

I’ve been doing something similar for investing in stocks and it has worked well. I’m exploring building an NLP-powered version of this (based on crawling news events). If anyone is interested in chatting or collaborating, let me know. :)

I'm working on this space as well. Would love to collaborate.

Excellent! I just emailed you.

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#24

Post by scarier »

vosper wrote: post #8

> Well-calibrated forecasters, for instance, can estimate the likelihood that a skirmish with the Chinese navy in the South China Sea will result in at least two American deaths by December 31. But what policymakers really want to know is the extent to which China will threaten U.S. interests in the coming years and decades. This has never happened (a skirmish, let alone deaths) so how can we think that the forecaste…

Well, yish. It wouldn't be a big stretch from what we've seen perennially in the South China Sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#26

Post by trishankkarthik »

enkid wrote: post #14
trishankkarthik wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Haven't heard of Google or Twitter before, have you?

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#27

Post by trishankkarthik »

jacques_chester wrote: post #11
trishankkarthik wrote: post #3

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.

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

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.

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#28

Post by trishankkarthik »

civilized wrote: post #18
trishankkarthik wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Not a criticism if the worst you can say about someone is that he is "mean," not that he is wrong.

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#29

Post by vosper »

jessriedel wrote: post #21
vosper wrote: post #8

> Well-calibrated forecasters, for instance, can estimate the likelihood that a skirmish with the Chinese navy in the South China Sea will result in at least two American deaths by December 31. But what policymakers really want to know is the extent to which China will threaten U.S. interests in the coming years and decades. This has never happened (a skirmish, let alone deaths) so how can we think that the forecaste…

There's strong empirical evidence that prediction ability cross generalizes. That is, if a person is good at predicting unrelated topics A, B, and C, they are also like to be good at topic D.

But presumably you don't know how good they are at predicting topic D until topic D actually occurs at least once?

Unless the prediction is "this won't happen" and then it continuing to not happen makes the predictor look accurate... (slightly joking here)

The article seems to claim that a specific event, which has never happened, can be estimated accurately. Is that really possible? How can the accuracy be assessed?

Re: A Better Crystal Ball?

#30

Post by vosper »

scarier wrote: post #24
vosper wrote: post #8

> Well-calibrated forecasters, for instance, can estimate the likelihood that a skirmish with the Chinese navy in the South China Sea will result in at least two American deaths by December 31. But what policymakers really want to know is the extent to which China will threaten U.S. interests in the coming years and decades. This has never happened (a skirmish, let alone deaths) so how can we think that the forecaste…

Well, yish. It wouldn't be a big stretch from what we've seen perennially in the South China Sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident

That's not my point, though - perhaps I didn't word it clearly.

I'm not saying this event can't or won't happen, I'm questioning the claim (maybe I'm misinterpreting the article?) that we can accurately forecast the likelihood of it happening, even though it's never happened.

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