Has this year not been the perfect example that almost all prediction is bullshit? A quick list of the weirdness that has been 2020 so far. (I appreciate some of what's about to follow is highly correlated...) (1)
Australian Bushfires. Weinstein getting convicted. COVID-19 sweeping the globe. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying. Kobe Bryant dying. Black Lives Matter movement. Trump getting impeached. Trump getting COVID. Boris Johnson getting COVID. The first foreign Best Picture Oscar... (2)
Harry and Meghan leaving the Royal Family. Andrew *not* leaving the Royal Family. The global stock market crashing. Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest. Kim Jong Un's reported death. Hong Kong Protests. Californian fires. Explosions in Beirut. (3)
And there's more. So much more - this has a very western view and ignores most of what's happening in Africa and Asia. The point being that almost all of the polling we see on the US elections, the articles about 2nd waves and speculation on lifting restrictions... (4)
It's all basically made up. A poll is as good as the numbers you feed it (the models aren't magic). There are some really great forecasters out there - Tetlock's Superforecasting is a great read and Nate Silver's 538 is a good source of news... (5)
But ultimately, all it takes is a volcano erupting, an intercession from a senior intelligence official in the last weeks of an election, a slight mutation in a previously benign virus, and all the forecasts are suddenly irrelevant (6)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about this a lot (Black Swans and Fooled By Randomness). And I talk about this a lot at conferences. Is all forecasting bullshit? Are we so easily taken in by the models? This prediction has mathematics and data behind it, it must be right. Right? (7)
Data Science and tech generally is rife with bullshit and snakeoil. (Not always deliberately so). And some forecasts have some utility at least. But for every short term weather prediction (good forecasting!) there's a hedge-fund with a time series and gullible investors (8)
How do we tell the difference? Separate out the sensible from the absurd? It's really difficult. I don't know how to do it myself half the time (and the erosion of public trust is another issue entirely). Education is probably the most important thing we can do (9)
Statistical Literacy. Critical Thinking. Media Studies. These are vital for the world we live in today when we are bombarded with information, not all of it sincere. My great-grandparents and their ancestors, fishing and farming on a Greek island didn't need these skills. (10)
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