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How to Win at Forecasting (Edge conversation)

Philip Tetlock · 6 Dec 2012

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  1. Forecasters who were more modest about what could be accomplished predictably were actually generating more accurate predictions than forecasters who were more confident about what could be achieved. We called these theoretically confident forecasters "hedgehogs." We called these more modest, self-critical forecasters "foxes," drawing on Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox."
  2. If you're a fox and you believe there's some truth to the generalization that rising powers and hegemons tend to come into conflict with each other, but there are lots of other factors in play in the current geopolitical environment that make it less likely that China and the United States will come into conflict. That doesn't allow blink anymore, does it? It leads to "on the one hand, and on the other" patterns of reasoning–and you've got to strike some kind of integrative resolution of the conflicting arguments.

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