Thread by @AnnieDuke

How to Decide comes out a week from tomorrow, Tuesday October 13th!

How to Decide truly stands on the shoulders of giants and one of those giants is @PTetlock, who was kind enough to blurb the book. Today I want to shine a spotlight on his incredible work and mentorship.

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.@PTetlock is most famous for his work on Superforecasting with his wife and collaborator, Barb Mellers. That work resulted in the must read, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction which he wrote with @DGardner.

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amazon.com/Superforecasti…

.@DGardner is a must follow here on Twitter, BTW. 😊

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amazon.com/Superforecasti…

Here is was @SAPinker said about Superforecasting:

“The best way to know if an idea is right is to see if it predicts the future. But which ideas, which methods, which people have a track record of non-obvious predictions vindicated by the course of events?... (cont’d)

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...The answers will surprise you, and they have radical implications for politics, policy, journalism, education, and even epistemology…” - Steven Pinker

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And here is what Daniel Kahneman had to say:

“Philip Tetlock is the world expert on a vital subject. Superforecasting is the wonderful story of how he and his research team got ordinary people to beat experts in a very serious game. … (cont’d)

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"... It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.” - Daniel Kahneman

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The Superforecasting work of @PTetlock informs so much of what I write about. It’s themes, thesis, and methods are woven through both Thinking in Bets and How to Decide. So much of the conversations w/& mentorship of Phil & Barb is reflected in the pages of those books.

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BTW, you won’t regret listening to this Knowledge Project podcast, a conversation between @FarnamStreet and @PTetlock on his Superforecasting work.

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fs.blog/knowledge-proj…

.@PTetlock also wrote the book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

This is a must read exploration on the good and bad of deep subject matter expertise.

10/16

amazon.com/Expert-Politic…

The big idea in Expert Political Judgment is that the very quality that makes someone a good political forecaster (open-mindedness) is the opposite of what the media and punditry prize (a single minded focus on winning an ideological battle).

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amazon.com/Expert-Politic…

Expert Political Judgment is worth reading just for the concept of two thinking styles: the fox and the hedgehog. Foxes apply many perspectives and mental models to attack problems. They are polymaths.

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Hedgehogs have one big idea and impose that one model of the world on all problems. Because of that, foxes are better at predicting the future than hedgehogs.

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BTW, if exploring the advantages of being a generalist in a specialists’ world intrigues you, Range by @DavidEpstein is a must read addition to the topic.

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amazon.com/Range-Generali…

There is so much more to say about @PTetlock and Barb Mellers. They are two of the smartest and kindest people I know. They have both sharpened my thinking in ways I am so deeply grateful for. They are paradigmatic examples of open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity.

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I am so grateful for their collaboration and mentorship.

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