Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? - New Edition
Since its original publication, Expert Political Judgment by New York Times bestselling author Philip Tetlock has established itself as a contemporary classic in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making. Now with a new preface in which Tetlock discusses the latest research in the field, the book explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.
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Community Reviews
Review
No, not for me at all even though I love politics and social science.
Now, the audiobook may be lower quality than the book itself for sure. I really didn't enjoy the wooden but yet still over the top narrator with a voice I never quite enjoyed. It was like he was reading words without reading the meaning of the sentences while nearly screaming each word. The book itself doesn't really make for a good audiobook though so the narrator is not fully to blame. It's dry academic writing and a complicated topic. The 2 things combined makes this a package way too hard to unpack and understand. You have to be fully focused on each sentence to get anything out of this hard text yet it's not some deep philosophical book with some great life lessons so the work doesn't seem to be rewarded fairly. Rather it presents complicated topics via simple examples without anything deep to it. So why it's written this way I just do not get at all. But I assume the author may have feared being seen down upon if he wrote it in simple English.
And this is even more confusing as his book "Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction" was good and had opposite problems. It was too simple for the topic at hand yet the writing style never tried to make it more intellectual than it really was. So Superforecasting was a book I could get something from even though it wasn't anything scientific or important. So while Superforecasting isn't an essential read it's a basic good book. While this book is about a more complicated and less important topic, but much more academic writing style.
I feel really bad for not liking it because I think this book has a ton of good points in it and I agree with the conclusions overall. As a package it's just not for me. It's boring and sleep inducing. That doesn't mean it's a bad book or that I don't recommend it. You just need to have great patience and focus to enjoy it and those things are not my strong suits. I really feel like there is a 4 star book in here for me somehow.
Also, the silly analogies and weird names for things just had me more confused. The academic writing style is already really hard to get into so the various new terms I had to learn were too much. Too much boring work for the amount of lessons I could get out of the book. It's not that I refuse to put in this work if needed. It's just that I don't see why I should when there are hundreds of audiobooks out there with good lessons but that I will actually enjoy. Maybe I am lazy or something? But this is something I do for fun not for work. So it needs to be fun somehow.
Overall I think the issue is that the academic writing style does not include clear and good findings I can fully agree on. It's different with academic papers as I can read them and still check the data and agree with it. Here it's a loose discussion so it needs to have a more discussion focused style. A personal narration that I can clearly think about from all sides.
Conclusion
The audiobook went into one ear and out the other. Most conclusions didn't stick because the critical thinking needed for such a philosophy book wasn't made easy by the academic writing style. The dry academic writing style is pretty much how you make me not learn your lessons. But I still think this is a book many will enjoy and love. I just didn't.
I give it 2 stars because I think it has potential for other readers who don't have anything even close to ADHD. For me it's a 1 star book.
No, not for me at all even though I love politics and social science.
Now, the audiobook may be lower quality than the book itself for sure. I really didn't enjoy the wooden but yet still over the top narrator with a voice I never quite enjoyed. It was like he was reading words without reading the meaning of the sentences while nearly screaming each word. The book itself doesn't really make for a good audiobook though so the narrator is not fully to blame. It's dry academic writing and a complicated topic. The 2 things combined makes this a package way too hard to unpack and understand. You have to be fully focused on each sentence to get anything out of this hard text yet it's not some deep philosophical book with some great life lessons so the work doesn't seem to be rewarded fairly. Rather it presents complicated topics via simple examples without anything deep to it. So why it's written this way I just do not get at all. But I assume the author may have feared being seen down upon if he wrote it in simple English.
And this is even more confusing as his book "Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction" was good and had opposite problems. It was too simple for the topic at hand yet the writing style never tried to make it more intellectual than it really was. So Superforecasting was a book I could get something from even though it wasn't anything scientific or important. So while Superforecasting isn't an essential read it's a basic good book. While this book is about a more complicated and less important topic, but much more academic writing style.
I feel really bad for not liking it because I think this book has a ton of good points in it and I agree with the conclusions overall. As a package it's just not for me. It's boring and sleep inducing. That doesn't mean it's a bad book or that I don't recommend it. You just need to have great patience and focus to enjoy it and those things are not my strong suits. I really feel like there is a 4 star book in here for me somehow.
Also, the silly analogies and weird names for things just had me more confused. The academic writing style is already really hard to get into so the various new terms I had to learn were too much. Too much boring work for the amount of lessons I could get out of the book. It's not that I refuse to put in this work if needed. It's just that I don't see why I should when there are hundreds of audiobooks out there with good lessons but that I will actually enjoy. Maybe I am lazy or something? But this is something I do for fun not for work. So it needs to be fun somehow.
Overall I think the issue is that the academic writing style does not include clear and good findings I can fully agree on. It's different with academic papers as I can read them and still check the data and agree with it. Here it's a loose discussion so it needs to have a more discussion focused style. A personal narration that I can clearly think about from all sides.
Conclusion
The audiobook went into one ear and out the other. Most conclusions didn't stick because the critical thinking needed for such a philosophy book wasn't made easy by the academic writing style. The dry academic writing style is pretty much how you make me not learn your lessons. But I still think this is a book many will enjoy and love. I just didn't.
I give it 2 stars because I think it has potential for other readers who don't have anything even close to ADHD. For me it's a 1 star book.
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