Almost all people think they are good at assessing data, drawing rational conclusions and projecting the future from that data. Since good pronosticators cannot always explain their cognitive process, that only adds to the "hunch" or "feeling" sense that so many use to justify their predictions even when they are grossly uninformed or worse, misinformed. It matters not if they are less often correct than the results of a coin flip would produce -- they still persist in believing that they have some sort of x-ray vision into the future. Yet, we all have participated in a recent experiment and can assess how well we did.
Based on your conclusion BEFORE any vote in Congress, what do you score in the poll below?
Most of the people in this country demonstrated that they are really bad at assessing data and projecting from it. If you score less than two on this retrospective test, then you are simply no better at analytical work than would be a monkey or a pair of dice.
Those who score four (provided their assessment was honestly derived from the data we all got and not an ideological bias) are the best at "tea reading." A three is still pretty good. A two is good enough. They are also the people DEMs should be listening to about this "electibility" thing, because they are the ones who can "see around the corners" (perceive pitfalls) and usually process and see a fuller landscape much sooner than regular folks. I would like to hear more from those who scored 3 or 4 on the question of Iraq.