
The Peculiar Blindness of Experts - 16961714b
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/how-to-predict-the-future/588040/
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lordnacho
> Two days later, a team member with experience in finance saw that the
> hryvnia was strengthening amid events he’d thought would surely weaken it.
> He informed his teammates that this was exactly the opposite of what he’d
> expected, and that they should take it as a sign of something wrong in his
> understanding.

This is an experience every young trader ever has had many, many times. Myself
included. You see an economic figure, you think "hey this should do x", and it
doesn't do what you think. The senior trader on the desk will remind you that
your wrongness is worthy of further thought.

Keep in mind that prices are themselves predictions. You are predicting what
people will predict.

If you're wondering why the talking heads get things wrong, it's mainly
because they are talking heads. They're paid to say something interesting, not
to make money betting on it. That includes the banks' own analysts! They don't
have money on the line, they are sales people at core. I've personally had
conversations where the same guy will tell me to buy AND sell the same thing
(USDJPY in that case). As long as I do it with him.

But mainly the guys making pronouncements on TV are there to get themselves
another slot on TV.

~~~
schalab
The talking heads point is deeper than that. Not only are they paid to be
interesting.

The very ability of being good at talking might be co-related with other base
attributes.

For instance being good at talking might be co-related with tunnel vision, not
having a bigger perspective, being able to connect things which shouldnt be,
naivety, empathy and so on.

So if your process of conferring the title of expertise involves going through
the university system, or performing well in debates or on a podium, you will
get experts who are all wrong in exactly the same way and there is no one to
offer them a different perspective.

~~~
lordnacho
> For instance being good at talking might be co-related with tunnel vision,
> not having a bigger perspective, being able to connect things which shouldnt
> be, naivety, empathy and so on.

This is a good point. When you really understand something, you know what the
limits are. Your mind is full of ifs and buts.

People who are good at talking, especially persuasive talking, tend to be so
because they can articulate a clean vision with few wrinkles. Think of any
political discussion. In reality there's a tradeoff between higher taxes and
higher social services. You end up getting people who essentially argue that
it's a no-brainer, one way or the other depending on their flag.

~~~
Gravityloss
The candidates do write books. One politician here is known as one of the
"thinkers". In his books often times a problem is shown from many angles and
his position ends up on some balance point. For example he might consider
taxing wealth more and (salary) income less.

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__MatrixMan__
I feel like the author intended for me to leave the article less likely to dig
my heels in when acting as an expert and more likely to maintain a flexible
worldview when making predictions in a scenario where there are a variety of
well developed and contradicting predictive theories. And that's probably a
good sentiment.

But I think it's important to recognize that foxes outperform hedgehogs only
in scenarios where hedgehogs are available. That is, to weigh contradictory
theories requires that those theories exist in the first place: and that's the
work of experts.

So rather than ask: "should you be a fox or a hedgehog?"

I'm more interested in: How should foxes and hedgehogs be arranged so that the
best predictions are made? How many contradictory predictive theories are
necessary to let the foxes do their work and are there diminishing returns re:
how deeply the hedgehogs have gone into their specialization?

Research in this direction could have implications re: how we fund other
research.

~~~
rossdavidh
Phil Tetlock, the expert on experts whose research is discussed in the
article, does raise this point. He also discusses the difference between being
a good predictor, and being good at raising interesting questions. There are
some videos of him and a number of other smart folks here:
[https://www.edge.org/event/edge-master-class-2015-philip-
tet...](https://www.edge.org/event/edge-master-class-2015-philip-tetlock-a-
short-course-in-superforecasting)

------
huffmsa
Khosla says he doesn't do much more than write checks now because he's been
wrong almost every time about which start-ups he should help with. He thinks
he's working on the next big thing, but it usually flops and a different
company in his portfolio is the fund returner.

Furthrr, "Expert" Hedge fund managers routinely get smoked by the index.

> _Seides had already conceded the bet earlier in 2017, due to the huge
> disparity in performance between his basket of hedge funds and Buffett 's
> S&P 500 index fund. After all, through the end of 2016, the S&P 500 index
> fund had gained more than 85%, while the average of Seides' five baskets of
> funds was just 22%. _ [0]

[0]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/investing/2018...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/investing/2018/01/03/warren-
buffett-just-officially-won-his-million-dol.aspx)

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16961714b
Hedgehogs (experts) know one big thing, while foxes (generalists) know many
little things. However, foxes seem to be better at predicting the future than
hedgehogs, because they constantly challenge their worldview and see their own
ideas as hypotheses in need of testing. So maybe the reason why foxes are more
successful forecasters is that they focus on learning, their "one big thing"
strategy.

~~~
AllegedAlec
> However, [generalists] seem to be better at predicting the future than
> [experts], because they constantly challenge their worldview and see their
> own ideas as hypotheses in need of testing.

What? No. You're implying that experts do not challenge their own beleives and
ideas about the world.

~~~
mcguire
That is literally what the article is arguing, and it's something I've seen
often enough to be convinced about.

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kartan
I like the conclusion of the article that broad knowledge is needed to do good
predictions.

But, I do not see the point on going against experts. Probably the learning is
that the most convinced and self-assured you are in a topic the easier is to
get things wrong.

Take any non-expert that is sure and vocal about a future event and probably
is wrong also.

~~~
rossdavidh
I think there is a useful distinction to be made between fields like physics,
where expertise in the field makes you more likely to make accurate
predictions (e.g. about when that comet is going to appear in the sky), and
fields like economics, where expertise in the field actually makes you less
likely to make accurate predictions than a non-expert (e.g. whether we will
have a recession soon).

Consider an expert in medicine, back when the "four humours" theory of
medicine was what experts used. A non-expert would think, "bleeding is bad, I
don't want to bleed, I need my blood". Experts believed in bleeding their
patients/victims to restore a balance of the humours. George Washington was
probably killed by his doctor in this way.

Being an expert in a field only helps, when the basic theoretical models of
that field have reached a certain minimum level of maturity.

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dfilppi
The core problem is that experts bad predictions are ignored, and they are
continue to be consulted. Fundamental flaw in human psychology.

~~~
tim333
People often look to the experts that support what they want to happen. You
see a lot of that in politics.

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narag
Interestingly, the article gives a tested recipe for creating a forecasting
team. I wonder if it has been used for more important matters since, or maybe
an expert committee advised against it :)

~~~
johnchristopher
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6993091-the-dervish-
hous...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6993091-the-dervish-house)

The Dervish House from Ian McDonald has a plot thread based around that idea.

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untilHellbanned
Experts are all about output. If you don’t learn and take in input regularly
I’d argue you stop being an expert.

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mensetmanusman
Another win for the T-shaped worker?

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mhkool
Predicting anything is a gamble. One simply does not know what will happen but
one makes assumptions. Let'ś take weather forecasting as an example. It is
difficult to do it right for 5 days and often goes wrong for 10 days. But when
you ask a group of scientist a simple question, like "Do you think that humans
contribute to the rise of CO2 ?" and 97% say "yeah", then you can make a new
assumption: CO2 will probably rise fast and we can make a new climate model
that goes beyond 10-day forecasts and we assume that we can accurately
forecast what happens in 80 years. Most, however, do not realise that they
assume a lot.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You seem to be implying that climate forecasting can't possibly be accurate
because weather forecasting is time-limited.

That's not correct. Climate and weather forecasting are different disciplines
based on different models.

Of course you can't forecast whether it will be raining on a specific day
twenty years from now. But you can certainly make a good estimate of how
likely drought is.

