Superforecasting

Question 1

1. Triage

Answer 1

Focus on questions where your hard work is likely to pay off - don’t waste your efforts on “easy glock-wise” questions where easy rules of thumb can get you close to the right answer or impenetrable “cloud-like” questions where even fancy statistical models can beat the dart-throwing chimp; concentrate your efforts in the goldilocks zone

Question 2

10 systems to improve forecasts - 1-5

Answer 2

1. Triage
2. Break it down into smaller problems
3. Right balance between inside and outside views
4. Believe updating
5. Look for the clashing causal forces in each problem

Question 3

2. Break down smaller problems

Answer 3

Fermi-problems - decompose problem in knowable and unknowable parts - flesh out your assumptions - fermi-izing very important

Question 4

3. Right balance between inside and outside views

Answer 4

There is “nothing new under the sun”; creative searches for comparative events; outside-view question: How often things of this sort happen for things of this sort;

Question 5

4. Believe updating

Answer 5

It can be boring, occasionally uncomfortable, but still very important; Skill-full updating requires pulling subtle signals from noisy news-flows all the while resisting wishful thinking

Question 6

5. Look for the clashing causal forces in each problem

Answer 6

Normally, always at least one good counter-argument; “Dragon-fly synthesizing” of different views

Question 7

10 systems to improve forecasts - 5-11

Answer 7

6. Distinguish an adequate amount of degrees of doubt
7. Strike the balance between under- and overconfidence
8. Look for the errors behind your mistakes, but beware of review mirror error hindsight biases
9. Bring out the best in others, and let others bring out the best in you
10. Master the air-balancing bicycle
11. Don’t treat commandments as commandments

Question 8

6. Strive to distinguish as many degrees of doubt as the problem permits, but no more

Answer 8

Nuance matters, like in Poker, you are better if you can distinguish 60-40 bets from 40-60 bets, or 55-45 from 45-55, etc.

Question 9

7. Strike the balance between under- and overconfidence, between prudence and decisiveness

Answer 9

Trade-off between “waffler” and “blow-hard”; trade-off between misses and false-alarms

Question 10

8. Look for the errors behind your mistakes, but beware of review mirror error hindsight biases

Answer 10

Unflinching post-mortems; Where did you go wrong; but it is possible also to “learn too much”, maybe you were generally on the right track; also, maybe you were just lucky

Question 11

9. Bring out the best in others, and let others bring out the best in you

Answer 11

Understand the arguments of the other side so well that you can reproduce them to the others satisfaction; precision questioning helping others to clarify their arguments so they are not misunderstood; constructive confrontation: learn to disagree without being disagreeable; team management is like holding a dove in your hand: hold it too tight and you kill it, but hold it too loosely and you loose it

Question 12

10. Master the air-balancing bicycle

Answer 12

Learning requires doing, with good feedback that has no ambiguity whether you are succeeding

Question 13

11. Don’t treat commandments as commandments

Answer 13

Two cases will never exactly be the same - constant mindfulness

Question 14

Chaos theory

Answer 14

From weather forecasting - even very small changes result in very different long-term results

Question 15

Conscious thought is demanding:

Answer 15

Most people (also very smart people) aren’t very reflective –> we tend to go with strong hunches - if it feels true, “it is” - instead of going through all the evidence

Question 16

Journalists trying to explain why the stock market rose - bias/problem:

Answer 16

We move too fast from “no idea why” to a conclusion

Question 17

Often, the best evidence something is true is…

Answer 17

(failing to) figuring out why something is not

Question 18

Example for how “experts/compelling stories” can even fool the best/most rigorous

Answer 18

Expert who investigated doctors’ lack of scientifical evidence (also in medicine in general) - a very rigorous person - still “accepted misdiagnosis” by an “expert oncologist” regarding cancer due to “compelling story”