Officially ... Enter the Garbage Men

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I have always found it amusing how some garbage men could better predict the economy than our well trained economists. Apparently I'm not alone in this.

Why the experts missed the crash


By the time he finished in 2003, Tetlock had signed up nearly 300 academics, economists, policymakers and journalists and mapped more than 82,000 forecasts against real-world outcomes, analyzing not just what the experts said but how they thought: how quickly they embraced contrary evidence, for example, or reacted when they were wrong. And wrong they usually were, barely beating out a random forecast generator.
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Americans were shocked at how wrong the experts were. You weren't. Why not?

My research certainly prepared me for widespread forecasting failures. We found that our experts' predictions barely beat random guesses - the statistical equivalent of a dart-throwing chimp - and proved no better than predictions of reasonably well-read nonexperts. Ironically, the more famous the expert, the less accurate his or her predictions tended to be.


Ha ha ha. I'm not the only one more likely to trust the garbage man than the politico's and the economists.


Could we live without experts?

No way. We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need. That's why part of the responsibility for experts' poor record falls on us. We seek out experts who promise impossible levels of accuracy, then we do a poor job keeping score


Yeah yeah , blame the rape victem. I've heard this one before too. They lied to us, they put themselves up on a pedistal , and got themselves a lot of money for telling those lies. And when they couldn't produce ? It's not my fault for lying to you ! It's your fault for listening to me !

This is called blaming the victem for getting raped. Doesn't work in a court of law. (except in Islamic nations) Why should it work in the real world ?

I think I'll keep my trust in the garbage men , not the economists, thanks a bunch.