[extropy-chat] Inside Vs. Outside Forecasts

[Russell Wallace]

On 10/11/05, Robin Hanson <rhanson at gmu.edu> wrote:
>
> At 03:00 PM 10/11/2005, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> >It has frequently been observed that predictions overpromise in the
> >nearterm, and underpromise in the long term.
>
> I've heard this claim made too, but I wonder: has anyone ever
> systematically collected evidence to test this claim?
>

In particular, it's usually justified by saying people predict linearly
rather than exponentially, but Malthus was the last author I've heard of to
meet that description; every prediction I've read that has growth continuing
at all, has taken exponential growth as a conservative baseline (sometimes
accurate), and often then added shortenings of doubling time, asymptotic
growth etc (thus far always inaccurate). I'd be interested in
counterexamples.

- Russell
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