Great article, Dan. In my business career, I have seen numerous instances where executives don't have the intellectual horsepower to deal with measures of uncertainty. Unfortunate for them and their decisions.
After the Iraq War, checking up on pundit prediction accuracy seems like checking whether the Indy 500 should have had speeding tickets.
Weighing in for-or-against the Iraq War was the most-consequential thing journalists could do in a generation, since about a million people eventually died of the second-order effects on stability.
The New York Times, famously, apologized, not for merely calling it wrong, but for actively helping Cheney spread disinformation to sell the war. The Washington Post, where Fred Hiatt approved 27 op-eds in favour of war, and two against, infamously did not apologize. They instead did an editorial-board op-ed at their angry readers, explaining how they thought that the danger of not-acting was the greater danger. (In 2007, they admitted to not being skeptical enough), though they were STILL saying "the decision was right, the execution was wrong":
I guess the worst predictions for this year, were the military pundits confidently predicting that Putin would not really invade - a day or so before he did. But NOTHING comes remotely close to the mistake of saying that Saddam, who hated Islamists, captured, tortured and killed them, was really about to conspire with the deadly enemies that volunteered to push him out of Kuwait in '91, to actually give them a Bomb. That was dead-crazy nuts, there was an entire movie ("Shock and Awe") about how Knight-Ridder journalists got it right, and the big dailies ignored them.
Really ought to mention Nate Silver! He's the leader in providing predictions as well as later reviews of his predictions. But the basic point here is excellent and well said. Thanks.
Great article, Dan. In my business career, I have seen numerous instances where executives don't have the intellectual horsepower to deal with measures of uncertainty. Unfortunate for them and their decisions.
After the Iraq War, checking up on pundit prediction accuracy seems like checking whether the Indy 500 should have had speeding tickets.
Weighing in for-or-against the Iraq War was the most-consequential thing journalists could do in a generation, since about a million people eventually died of the second-order effects on stability.
The New York Times, famously, apologized, not for merely calling it wrong, but for actively helping Cheney spread disinformation to sell the war. The Washington Post, where Fred Hiatt approved 27 op-eds in favour of war, and two against, infamously did not apologize. They instead did an editorial-board op-ed at their angry readers, explaining how they thought that the danger of not-acting was the greater danger. (In 2007, they admitted to not being skeptical enough), though they were STILL saying "the decision was right, the execution was wrong":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/17/AR2007031700950.html
I guess the worst predictions for this year, were the military pundits confidently predicting that Putin would not really invade - a day or so before he did. But NOTHING comes remotely close to the mistake of saying that Saddam, who hated Islamists, captured, tortured and killed them, was really about to conspire with the deadly enemies that volunteered to push him out of Kuwait in '91, to actually give them a Bomb. That was dead-crazy nuts, there was an entire movie ("Shock and Awe") about how Knight-Ridder journalists got it right, and the big dailies ignored them.
Nothing else compares.
Really ought to mention Nate Silver! He's the leader in providing predictions as well as later reviews of his predictions. But the basic point here is excellent and well said. Thanks.
Keynes said something about providing forecasts not because he knew, but because he was asked. There is still a market for them.
The political future of the free world is too important to allow accuracy to gauge success
/s
I am looking at predictive medicine ………