Quote
“For superforecasters, beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded.”— Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner, in Superforecasting (2015) · Superforecasting →
Why it was said
Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner write this in their portrait of the volunteers who beat intelligence analysts in a forecasting tournament. It is the line the book is remembered for.
What it actually means
Most people treat a first judgement as part of themselves and defend it against later evidence. Superforecasters treated it as a starting estimate, stated it as a number, and moved it a little each time evidence arrived, in proportion to how surprising the evidence was. The sentence describes a relationship with one's own opinions that is unusual and, Tetlock's data showed, learnable: the willingness to be wrong in small increments is what makes someone right in the end.
How to use it
- 1State your next prediction as a number and a date, then update it in small steps as evidence arrives.
- 2When you feel yourself defending a view, ask what would change your mind and whether you have looked for it.