[ExI] What's Wrong With Academic Futurists?

[Robin D Hanson]

On Jan 28, 2014, at 8:29 AM, Keith Henson wrote:
>>>> If you have no confidence in "people's" ability to predict, I don't see how
>>>> that can be the basis for preferring some people's ability over others.
>>> 
>>> I think I said I took them seriously, over people who have not done
>>> any work.  Their predictions tend to be plausible, not accurate.
>> 
>> I can't see the point of plausibility that doesn't lead to more accuracy.
> 
> Let's take my own work as an example.  I think it is plausible that
> humans will solve the energy, carbon, climate, and economic problems
> stemming from limited fossil fuels, particularly oil with solar power
> from space. ...
> Dose that mean it will happen?  I can't say so with confidence because
> the energy market could collapse from an epidemic that wiped out most
> of the race. Or PV paint and cheap storage could take over the market.
> Or some version of cold fusion could be rapidly fitted to existing
> coal facilities.

You seem to think that only predictions made with confidence are relevant.
If you had assigned a 5% chance to the event that happened, while others
assigned a 1% chance, then your prediction was more accurate, even if it
was far from confident. 

One can also score a pool of conditional predictions for accuracy. So even if
you only have opinions on what might happen if some other things happen,
we can still talk about the general accuracy of your predictions. 

Robin Hanson  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Res. Assoc., Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford Univ.
Assoc. Professor, George Mason University
Chief Scientist, Consensus Point
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