My uncle is pretty smart..................

 

He collected over 28,000 forecasts made by 284 political analysts, economists, foreign policy bigwigs, and all the usual loud-talking necktie people. What Tetlock found (and I’m condensing 20 years of depressing data here) is that the average talking head was terrible at predicting real-world outcomes.

Not “mildly off.” Not “in the ballpark.” I mean barely better than chance. Turns out your uncle screaming at the TV is statistically equivalent to a CNN pundit in a bowtie.

-Eric Barker, from his post, 4 Secrets to Smarter Thinking