Comments on: Foxes vs Hedgehogs: Predictive Success

By: PAO and Memory « meme Log

PAO and Memory « meme Log — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:39:16 +0000

[...] a contest between hedgehogs and foxes, I suspect foxes have much more accurate long term recall. I’ve got to work on minimizing my [...]

By: gwern

gwern — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:57:58 +0000

New Yorker link now at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1

By: Club Troppo » Happy birthday Hume the fox, who condemns hedgehogs for their violent and absurd reasoning

Mon, 09 May 2011 02:50:59 +0000

[...] in the business of trying to make predictions just slightly on the right side of random, you should join us foxes. This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2011 at 10:46 AM and filed under Uncategorized. [...]

By: Trading 8s » The Ethical Investor: December 2010

Trading 8s » The Ethical Investor: December 2010 — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:35:31 +0000

[...] in his 2006 book Expert Political Judgment. He found that, while most experts are poor predictors, the “foxes” were correct more often. If you’re trying to predict the future, it turns out, you’re better off knowing many [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:09:16 +0000

I scored a +54 without having the bias of reading the book first. I imagine with the scores for each question not known to me ahead of time I might have hit down into the low 40s, it became obvious enough after a small number of questions that “my side” was the positive scoring one.

The biggest surprise to me is that Robin at -7 produces a blog I find so incredibly interesting.

By: Is Robin Hanson a fox or a hedgehog? | Midas Oracle .ORG

Is Robin Hanson a fox or a hedgehog? | Midas Oracle .ORG — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:37:50 +0000

[...] Philip Tetlock’s foxes and hedgehogs Share [...]

By: Hal Finney

Hal Finney — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 07:20:34 +0000

Reading a blog entry from last month by Greg Mankiw, a commentor mentioned this paper which discusses some similar failings among economists:

http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/oal4/research/fcast.pdf

Lamont, Owen A. “Macroeconomic Forecasts And Microeconomic Forecasters,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2002, v48(3,Jul), 265-280.

Abstract: “In the presence of principal-agent problems, published macroeconomic forecasts by professional economists may not measure expectations. Forecasters may use their forecasts in order to manipulate beliefs about their ability. I test a cross-sectional implication of models of reputation and information-revelation. I find that as forecasters become older and more established, they produce more radical forecasts. Since these more radical forecasts are in general less accurate, ex post forecast accuracy grows significantly worse as forecasters become older and more established. These findings indicate that reputational factors are at work in professional macroeconomic forecasts.”

By: Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:04:57 +0000

“Hedgehogs actually do worse in their own fields where they are supposed experts than when they are forced to make predictions in other areas.”

That doesn’t sound bizarre to me given that hedgehog experts fare worse than chimps. Presumably hedgehog non-experts become more like chimps (random).

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 10:19:56 +0000

Tetlock’s book is great and will be a classic. My main worry is that his results will not generalize beyond the area of foreign policy experts, who have obvious incentives to gain attention by pontificating some impressive theory to explain the muddled mess that is world events. These experts are rarely in charge of foreign policy, and so their expertize is clearly not based on how well they manage it; they gain fame instead by standing out from the crowd with an understandable position. Their audience may care less about their predictive accuracy than about their ability to spin a compelling and flattering narrative.