Accurate predictions help us win, inaccurate predictions help us lose, and bogus predictions not only help us lose but cost us credibility with the public.
We have a collective interest in finding those among us who have the knowledge, reasoning ability, or whatever-it-takes to make accurate predictions. We should also start ignoring those whose predictions are consistently wrong, so as to not waste time and effort going down the wrong trail on issues of the day.
A prediction is not a wish. Wishes are about what you want. Predictions are about what you realistically expect. But wishing doesn’t make it so, and even rational forecasting doesn’t make it so: there is no substitute for action, and no excuse for inaction. The value of accurate predictions is in focusing action where it is most needed and most likely to be effective.
Everyone wants to know the future. And most of us think we’re pretty good at anticipating events. This series of stories is intended to sort the wheat from the chaff so we can refine our methods.
Every January the tabloids run headlines such as “Top Ten Psychics’ Predictions for the New Year.” What you never see are tabloid headlines such as “Top Ten Psychics’ Bogus Predictions that Didn’t Come True Last Year.”
But that’s not where it ends. The MSM has its highly-paid pundits who perform the same role, usually in “serious tones for serious people.” As with tabloid psychics, you never see them called to account for bogus utterances that flop.
We should start keeping track of quotes from those highly-paid MSM pundits. Over time we’ll start to see who among them are real experts who know what they’re talking about, and who among them are peddlers of BS. Exposing the BS-ers may or may not lead to getting them replaced but it’s worth a try.
Here’s what we’re looking for:
= Predictions about likely outcomes of primaries and other political events. Be as specific as you can.
Tomorrow (Tuesday 8 March) we have Republican primaries in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi, and Democratic primaries in Michigan and Mississippi. Who will win in each state?
= Predictions about other world events in any field.
For example, North Korea is making belligerent noises about the yearly joint US/South Korea military exercises. Will North Korea make physically hostile gestures before the exercises end on 30 April?
= Quotes and links to predictions others have made in stories and comments on DK and elsewhere.
= Quotes from MSM pundits and others who are promoted as experts.
= Track record: predictions (yours or others') that did or didn’t come true.
= Anything about how you forecast political events. Yes, listening to your guts is also OK, if it gets you accurate results.
The random number experiments begin next week.
I’m waiting for a hardware random number generator (RNG) to arrive, that I expect this week. The source of deterministic random numbers will be the last one or two digits of residential telephone numbers in the physical white pages opened “at random,” that functions as a random number table. The source of nondeterministic random numbers will be ambient background radiation converted to digits.
In case anyone’s wondering...
This isn’t sponsored by anyone. Everything I have to say about this series will be published within this series, including results and analyses. I won’t be publishing results anywhere else or providing them to anyone other than in these pages. Anyone who sees these stories and comments will be able to use them as they see fit, and since this is accessible via the internet at-large, we don’t have control over that.
The primary goal here is to find people who have good track records, and methods that help improve accuracy. Given what’s at stake in this year’s general election (including two or three more Supreme Court seats), we all have a strong interest in accurate forecasting to focus our efforts where they will make a difference.
I’ll be checking in later in the day to read comments & reply, and then some time in the evening/night I’ll post my own predictions about tomorrow’s primaries.