Very interesting how a 2005 book can become an overnight sensation. Philip Tetlock, whose work I've written about before, keeps getting cited in high places. Nicholas Kristof's latest op-ed on "Learning How to Think" is all about Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment (now extended by pundits to cover financial expertise, too), and how the media enables and rewards bad thinking:
Talent bookers for television shows and reporters tended to call up experts who provided strong, coherent points of view, who saw things in blacks and whites. People who shouted — like, yes, Jim Cramer!
The marketplace of ideas for now doesn’t clear out bad pundits and bad ideas partly because there’s no accountability. We trumpet our successes and ignore failures — or else attempt to explain that the failure doesn’t count because the situation changed or that we were basically right but the timing was off.
Ironically, I checked the book out of the library yesterday. It's pretty serious stuff-- lots of Q coefficients and graphs-- but still is surprisingly readable.
And as soon as I've finished the article I'm working on, I'm going to write a short piece using Tetlock, Robert Burton, and Nassim Taleb, titled "The Evil Futurist's Guide to Being Famous, Successful, and Completely Wrong." Watch this space.
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