{"id":75698,"date":"2015-09-27T07:34:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-27T15:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75698"},"modified":"2015-09-27T07:36:54","modified_gmt":"2015-09-27T15:36:54","slug":"superforecasting-the-art-and-science-of-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75698","title":{"rendered":"Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Tetlock writes<\/a>: Like many hardball operators before and since, Vladimir Lenin insisted politics, defined broadly, was nothing more than a struggle for power, or as he memorably put it, \u201ckto, kogo?\u201d That literally means \u201cwho, whom\u201d and it was Lenin\u2019s shorthand for \u201cWho does what to whom?\u201d Arguments and evidence are lovely adornments but what matters is the ceaseless contest to be the kto, not the kogo. It follows that the goal of forecasting is not to see what\u2019s coming. It is to advance the interests of the forecaster and the forecaster\u2019s tribe. Accurate forecasts may help do that sometimes, and when they do accuracy is welcome, but it is pushed aside if that\u2019s what the pursuit of power requires. Earlier, I discussed Jonathan Schell\u2019s 1982 warning that a holocaust would certainly occur in the near future \u201cunless we rid ourselves of our nuclear arsenals,\u201d which was clearly not an accurate forecast. Schell wanted to rouse readers to join the swelling nuclear disarmament movement. He did. So his forecast was not accurate, but did it fail? Lenin would say it did exactly what it was supposed to do.<\/p>\n

COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:<\/p>\n

* \u2018Forecasting\u2019 to \u2018promote the interests of the individual or tribe\u2019 is, of course, not forecasting but propaganda pure and simple.<\/p>\n

As Tetlock notes, the way to call out propaganda is to take heed of who is actually issuing the propaganda, and what does he personally have to gain from disseminating those opinions.<\/p>\n

* Hence \u2013 eg \u2018Climate Change\u2019 \u2013 once people have control of the levers of power they can make whatever forecasts will best serve their agenda, and everyone else has to believe it or be punished.<\/p>\n

* A good, blatantly obvious and very recent example of this can be seen with official statements coming out of Germany regarding the so-called \u2018migrant\u2019 crisis.<\/p>\n

We are most sternly lectured that the \u2018migrants\u2019 are \u2018good\u2019 for Germany since, as we are reminded, that Germany has \u2018dire demographics\u2019 and is in urgent need of a transfusion of young, fresh blood to do all the work, (the rantings of vampires, apparently).<\/p>\n

Strange that a mere 6 months ago, before all this rubbish kicked off, nobody but nobody, least of all the German government was sending out desperate appeals to the world to round up every spare warm body in sight and to pack them off to man German factories.<\/p>\n

As Johnny Rotten famously smirked \u2018 Ha..ha..ha\u2026.ever get the feeling you\u2019ve been cheated?\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Tetlock writes: Like many hardball operators before and since, Vladimir Lenin insisted politics, defined broadly, was nothing more than a struggle for power, or as he memorably put it, \u201ckto, kogo?\u201d That literally means \u201cwho, whom\u201d and it was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75698"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75702,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75698\/revisions\/75702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}