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Expert Political Judgment by [Tetlock, Philip E.]

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Expert Political Judgment Kindle Edition

by Philip E. Tetlock (Author)

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The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.

Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat.

Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.

Length: 334 pages

Word Wise: Enabled

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Product Details

File Size: 3737 KB
Print Length: 334 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (April 30, 2009)
Publication Date: April 30, 2009
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00C4UT1A4
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Word Wise: Enabled
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Top Customer Reviews

A classic of Political Science & Cognitive Psychology

ByDr. Frank Stechon January 5, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Tetlock shows conclusively two key points: First, the best experts in making political estimates and forecasts are no more accurate than fairly simple mathematical models of their estimative processes. This is yet another confirmation of what Robyn Dawes termed "the robust beauty of simple linear models." The inability of human experts to out-perform models based on their expertise has been demonstrated in over one hundred fields of expertise over fifty years of research; one of the most robust findings in social science. Political experts are no exception.

Secondly, Tetlock demonstrates that experts who know something about a number of related topics (foxes) predict better than experts who know a great deal about one thing (hedgehogs). Generalist knowledge adds to accuracy.

Tetlock's survey of this research is clear, crisp, and compelling. His work has direct application to world affairs. For example he is presenting his findings to a conference of Intelligence Community leaders next week (Jan 2007) at the invitation of the Director of National Intelligence.

"Expert Political Judgment" is recommended to anyone who depends on political experts, which is pretty much all of us. Tetlock helps the non-experts to know more about what the experts know, how they know it, and how much good it does them in making predictions.

22 comments 51 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Careful, Plodding, Objective

ByPeter McCluskeyon September 22, 2006

Format: Paperback

This book is a rather dry description of good research into the forecasting abilities of people who are regarded as political experts. It is unusually fair and unbiased.

His most important finding about what distinguishes the worst from the not-so-bad is that those on the hedgehog end of Isaiah Berlin's spectrum (who derive predictions from a single grand vision) are wrong more often than those near the fox end (who use many different ideas). He convinced me that that finding is approximately right, but leaves me with questions.

Does the correlation persist at the fox end of the spectrum, or do the most fox-like subjects show some diminished accuracy?

How do we reconcile his evidence that humans with more complex thinking do better than simplistic humans, but simple autoregressive models beat all humans? That seems to suggest there's something imperfect in using the hedgehog-fox spectrum. Maybe a better spectrum would use evidence on how much data influences their worldviews?

Another interesting finding is that optimists tend to be more accurate than pessimists. I'd like to know how broad a set of domains this applies to. It certainly doesn't apply to predicting software shipment dates. Does it apply mainly to domains where experts depend on media attention?

To what extent can different ways of selecting experts change the results? Tetlock probably chose subjects that resemble those who most people regard as experts, but there must be ways of selecting experts which produce better forecasts. It seems unlikely they can match <a href="[...]">prediction markets</a>, but there are situations where we probably can't avoid relying on experts.

He doesn't document his results as thoroughly as I would like (even though he's thorough enough to be tedious in places):

I can't find his definition of extremists. Is it those who predict the most change from the status quo? Or the farthest from the average forecast?

His description of how he measured the hedgehog-fox spectrum has a good deal of quantitative evidence, but not quite enough for me check where I would be on that spectrum.

How does he produce a numerical timeseries for his autoregressive models? It's not hard to guess for inflation, but for the end of apartheid I'm rather uncertain.

Here's one quote that says a lot about his results:

Beyond a stark minimum, subject matter expertise in world politics translates less into forecasting accuracy than it does into overconfidence

0Comment 37 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Great Decision Making Evidence

ByT. Coyneon March 10, 2006

Format: Hardcover

As both a consultant and an investment manager I have spent a lot of years studying decision theory. One limitation in a lot of the work I encountered was its heavy reliance on lab studies using students. You were never quite sure if the conclusions applied in the "real world." This outstanding book puts that concern to rest. It is by far the richest body of evidence I have encountered on decision making in real world situations. Anybody interested in decision making and decision theory will profit from reading it.

0Comment 17 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Thank you Philip for writing such a powerful book. Thank you for showing that what so called experts are generally no better than ordinary citizens at predicting political events.

Published 7 months ago by Ninos Youkhana

A social sciences masterpiece

I have read Tetlock’s works in reverse chronological order. I first read Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, and read this book afterwards.Read more

Published 9 months ago by Abacus

Hilariously dated

The book opens with a full throated defense of the American invasion of Iraq and how doves who pine for a counterfactual reality where Saddam is still in power discount the...Read more

Published 1 year ago by d

Published 1 year ago by Maribeth Madonna

This books information is fascinating and challenging to read and absorb.

Published 1 year ago by nick s

Published 1 year ago by FlowerGirl

Hard to handle the statistical sections but the basic message is fascinating. Go Foxes.

Published on September 18, 2014 by harrison young

Brilliant research written up in a clear fashion. Important work that is quoted widely. Important implications for society and our politics

Published on March 2, 2014 by David McKay

We all think about the world and everything else in terms of our mental models. This has its own limitations, but used properly we will still be able to understand and predict the...Read more

Published on February 24, 2014 by Vinayagamoorthy

The education establishment promotes teaching "critical thinking", but does not know what that means

This book is excellent at demonstrating that *expertise* should be the goal of education, and not "critical thinking".Read more

Published on October 8, 2013 by W Stephens

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