Geopolitical Alpha

Chapter 4Politics

“You may have all the money, Raymond … but I have all the men with guns.”

— Frank Underwood, vice president of the United States of America in House of Cards

In Expert Political Judgment, Philip Tetlock calls on over two decades of psychology research to argue that those who professionalize “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends” are no better at making predictions than anyone else.¹

His conclusion leaves me with mixed feelings.²

Tetlock's book is encouraging because it means laypeople don't need insights from smoke-filled rooms to make actionable forecasts. Due to experts' forecast inaccuracy, everyone else has high odds of making a comparable prediction. Which means everyone – “experts” included – can improve their predictions by reading my book.

His book is discouraging to me – a forecaster – because it suggests that clients may also be wasting their time with this particular expert!

Yet I find solace in Tetlock's conclusion: the worst forecasters are those who “know one big thing,” who base their forecasts on a singular approach or theory.³ Instead of seeking the right answer, they seek time- and theory-saving ones.

For Tetlock, the high scorers are those who “know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible ‘ad hocery' that require stitching together diverse sources of information.”⁴

If accurate forecasts ...