Especially about the future

[nancylebov]

Economists who had a better record at calling extreme events had a worse record in general. “The analyst with the largest number as well as the highest proportion of accurate and extreme forecasts,” they wrote, “had, by far, the worst forecasting record.”

Link thanks to Marginal Revolution.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Doesn't surprise me. The people I knew who were talking about the forthcoming crash (mostly friends who worked at other financial institutions) were expecting it to fall over a long time before it did, and we would have been wrong for a couple of years of negative predictions as things continued to climb.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't bother with the survivalists' claim that the whole system is going to crash and we'll revert to a post-apocalyptic cowboy economy. I've found that The Future changes along conservative lines, even at the worst of times.

[avram]

As Frederick Pohl just said, about publishing Dhalgren: "I think that if you try a lot of weird ideas, and if you're lucky, now and then one of them will work -- magnificently, sometimes. But it's very rare that they will work a second time."

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that, and thought it was a really great coincidence with what I'd posted.