Just listened to a fascinating talk by psychologist Philip Tetlock, who long ago initiated a multi-decadal programme to ask hundreds of experts to make hundreds of predictions each about future political events, and has ever since been measuring their observed success rates and analysing the implications. Among other things he finds that those who adhere tightly to a central philosophy or dogma and derive all their answers from that philosophy are likely to be more confident that the future can be predicted, more willing to attempt to predict it, and significantly less likely to successfully do so than those who don’t subscribe to any all-encompassing world view. Neoclassical economists and marxists alike bomb. He also makes the interesting point that the two camps may not be able to exist independently, but that they are in fact “mutually interdependent ecosystems” wherein the ideologues push big ideas as far as they can go (“or perhaps further”) and the non-ideologues are “scavengers” who pick up bits and pieces of the exploded big ideas and fruitfully reassemble them. He also points out that if it is the reconstituted frankensteins of larger ideas which is most successful in prediction, then there are implications for optimal diversity in team-building. Scott Page, paging Dr. Scott Page. He also also also makes the interesting observation that neither the ideologues nor the non-ideologues did much better in their predications than simple statistical null model predictors (‘nothing happens’, ‘change continues at the same speed and direction that it has been’).

All very interesting. Blog summary here, .mp3 recording here. As per usual, it’s a Long Now seminar.