Comments on: Outlandish Pundits

By: TomHynes

TomHynes — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:01:57 +0000

Jim Cramer is right 50% of the time, and wrong 50% of the time, but makes more money than any of us because of his flair.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:49:16 +0000

In the case of the Iraq war wrong people got promoted and right people are still in obscurity.
http://www.radaronline.com/features/2007/01/betting_on_iraq_1.php

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:36:44 +0000

My point is that getting something surprising right is far from enough to be “feted with speaking engagements and special television appearances.” The fact that someone somewhere remembers you is not the same.

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:32:20 +0000

I’m not really sure I’d count that as “ignored”. I know about Xanadu, and I can’t personally name a pundit who’s famous for “getting Iraq right”. It’s probably safe to say that Xanadu is well-known among people interested in such matters.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:50:57 +0000

Eliezer, how about the whole Xanadu group predicting in 1985-1990 that the web would soon arrive?

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:29:59 +0000

Some examples of unusual predictions gotten right by ignored folk? (If it’s not too much bother.)

By: Robert Scarth

Robert Scarth — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:23:45 +0000

One area in which this could be tested is sports punditry. The outcomes are objective, but the difficulty would be defining “outlandish” predictions. Although one way would be to look at pundits predictions of scores and then compare how the distribution of predictions compares with the distribution of outcomes. Given what’s said above we would expect the predictions to be more dispersed than the outcomes.