Note: If you haven’t heard of forecasting, I would recommend at least skimming the Superforecaster Wikipedia page to get a brief overview of what I’m talking about before diving in. Some sorts of people are better at forecasting than other sorts of people. The
Autists get the famous "Linda is a bank teller" word problem more often than normal people because they haven't internalized the concept of Chekhov's Gun: if the author is giving you seemingly extraneous details, it's for a good reason.
Chekhov was the epitome of the non-autist.
The one year time frame in Tetlock's questions gives autists a big advantage. A Superforecaster pointed out to me about 8 years ago that a big part of his status was from not being bored with frequently looking up the latest details of the Spratly Island dispute between China and the Philippines.
Normies tend to assume that if their attention is being drawn to the Spratly Islands, that's because, as Chekhov's Gun would explain, something exciting is about to happen there. But, year after year, nothing very exciting has happened at the Spratly Islands. (Eventually, something huge might happen at the Spratly Islands, but Tetlock's forecasting survey gives each year equal weight so even if you are right in the long run that World War III will break out at the Spratly Islands, you won't get to be a Superforecaster until the Earth is a smoking cinder.)
But autists like details for the sake of details so they are good at monitoring the details without getting overly excited into assuming that something must be going to happen real soon now or Chekhov wouldn't have directed my attention toward the Spratly Islands.
" ‘A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?’,"
I'm confused how anyone would answer 10 cents? Did they not take High school algebra?
Near as I can tell (based on grading my own personal forecasts) the most important skill in forecasting is ignoring bad information. Most information has extremely bad signal, and a small amount of info has high signal. What's weird to me is that just being good at looking up base rates gets you ~80% of the way there, and the small amount extra is obtained by doing a good job at ignoring useless info and focusing only on the stuff that matters. I've gotten better at ignoring irrelevant information, but it's really hard to ignore all of it.
The most useful information about the Ukriane war was the deployment of certain types of logistical equipment that had absolutely nothing to do with statements by the kremlin. Seeing medical supplies entering the front made me convinced that war was happening, talk is cheap but moving medical supplies is expensive.
The most useful information about chinese invasion of taiwan is going to be the movement of civilian vessels to a port near the port of taiwan, because thats a costly signal that's both expensive and very wasteful to revoke.
I'm going to try to win the CSPI contest using extreme amounts of anti-noiise strategies, also I'm gonna game it super duper hard.
Autists get the famous "Linda is a bank teller" word problem more often than normal people because they haven't internalized the concept of Chekhov's Gun: if the author is giving you seemingly extraneous details, it's for a good reason.
Chekhov was the epitome of the non-autist.
The one year time frame in Tetlock's questions gives autists a big advantage. A Superforecaster pointed out to me about 8 years ago that a big part of his status was from not being bored with frequently looking up the latest details of the Spratly Island dispute between China and the Philippines.
Normies tend to assume that if their attention is being drawn to the Spratly Islands, that's because, as Chekhov's Gun would explain, something exciting is about to happen there. But, year after year, nothing very exciting has happened at the Spratly Islands. (Eventually, something huge might happen at the Spratly Islands, but Tetlock's forecasting survey gives each year equal weight so even if you are right in the long run that World War III will break out at the Spratly Islands, you won't get to be a Superforecaster until the Earth is a smoking cinder.)
But autists like details for the sake of details so they are good at monitoring the details without getting overly excited into assuming that something must be going to happen real soon now or Chekhov wouldn't have directed my attention toward the Spratly Islands.
" ‘A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?’,"
I'm confused how anyone would answer 10 cents? Did they not take High school algebra?
Near as I can tell (based on grading my own personal forecasts) the most important skill in forecasting is ignoring bad information. Most information has extremely bad signal, and a small amount of info has high signal. What's weird to me is that just being good at looking up base rates gets you ~80% of the way there, and the small amount extra is obtained by doing a good job at ignoring useless info and focusing only on the stuff that matters. I've gotten better at ignoring irrelevant information, but it's really hard to ignore all of it.
The most useful information about the Ukriane war was the deployment of certain types of logistical equipment that had absolutely nothing to do with statements by the kremlin. Seeing medical supplies entering the front made me convinced that war was happening, talk is cheap but moving medical supplies is expensive.
The most useful information about chinese invasion of taiwan is going to be the movement of civilian vessels to a port near the port of taiwan, because thats a costly signal that's both expensive and very wasteful to revoke.
I'm going to try to win the CSPI contest using extreme amounts of anti-noiise strategies, also I'm gonna game it super duper hard.