<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">FYI There was a tiny bit about hedgehogs and foxes. It's mostly about a program IARPA project that the Intelligence Community (CIA, NSA and several more) started and the author of this book won, when they made it into a contest. 2800 people became forecasters and from those emerged superforecasters, who consistently beat the IC of the government.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">It's a great book. Here are the characteristics of the model forecaster:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Cautious: nothing is certain</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Humble: reality is infinitely complex</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Nondeterministic: what happens is not meant to be, in the sense of fate</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Actively open-minded: beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasure to be protected</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Intelligent and knowledgeable, with a need for cognition: intellectually curious, enjoy puzzles and mental challenges</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Reflective: introspective and self-critical<br>Numerate: comfortable with numbers (though curiously few used Bayes or any other formula)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Pragmatic: not wedded to any idea or agenda</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Analytical: capable of stepping back from the tip of your nose perspective and considering other views</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Dragonfly-eyed: value diverse views and synthesize them into their own</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Probabilistic: judge using many grades of maybe</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Thoughtful updaters: when facts change, they change their minds</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Good intuitive psychologists: aware of the value of checking thinking for cognitive and emotional biases</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Growth mindset: believe it's possible to get better</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Grit: determined to keep at it however long it takes</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">For some questions they were posed, some changed their probability estimates dozens of times as a result of further research</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Strongest predictor of ability: perpetual beta - the idea that nothing ever gets to perfection, either 0 or 100%, and committed to belief in updating and self-improvement. So even after assigning a probability they continue to research and update. Never satisfied is one way to put it. Like good scientists.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">That is three times as powerful a factor as intelligence.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">They did not reveal the makeup of the super group, but it seems that a lot of them were into math in one way or another.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Interesting how the US Army changed completely after WWII to copy the German Wehrmacht' attitude towards following orders</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">bill w</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 2:13 PM, spike <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class="m_-2633128828807594466WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> extropy-chat [mailto:<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat-bounces@<wbr>lists.extropy.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>William Flynn Wallace<br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, May 10, 2017 10:52 AM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.<wbr>org</a>>; Mary Van Antwerp <<a href="mailto:mavah@aol.com" target="_blank">mavah@aol.com</a>>; Robert Wallace <<a href="mailto:rwallace71@gmail.com" target="_blank">rwallace71@gmail.com</a>>; Joel Wallace <<a href="mailto:bagsofsand@gmail.com" target="_blank">bagsofsand@gmail.com</a>>; Angela <<a href="mailto:dyley@bellsouth.net" target="_blank">dyley@bellsouth.net</a>>; Dylan Henderson <<a href="mailto:dch1997@gmail.com" target="_blank">dch1997@gmail.com</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> [ExI] quote of the day<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">>…<span style="color:black">I have finally seen a definition of humility that I can say fits me:<u></u><u></u></span></span></p></div><span class=""><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">>…<span style="color:black">Again, from Superforecasting:<u></u><u></u></span></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">>…<span style="color:black">'....intellectual humility ...is a recognition that reality is profoundly complex, that seeing things clearly is a constant struggle, when it can be done at all, and that human judgment must therefore be riddled with mistakes. This is true for fools and geniuses alike. So it's quite possible to think highly of yourself and be intellectually humble.'<u></u><u></u></span></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div></span><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">>…<span style="color:black">bill w<u></u><u></u></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I looked for definitions of humility. Tried Webster’s, a modest or low opinion of one’s own importance and so forth, but you know the bible puts that big emphasis on humility, so a number of us were debating the issue. Every time guys get together, you know how it always goes BillW when guys debate things: pretty soon someone decides we need to have a contest, to find out who is the most humble.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I told you before how that came out: we all tied for second place. We piled up on the left pedestal, the silver medalists side, and you can envision it: the platform tipped over and landed on top of us pile of humbled losers. Then of course we all felt stupid and humbled even more, which put us all up on the top pedestal, but when we righted the thing and got up there, we got all not humble up there because we all won, so they put us back down a level and the whole thing repeated.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">It was ugly.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><u></u><u></u></font></span></span></p></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">spike<span style="color:black"><u></u><u></u></span></span></p></div></font></span></div></div></div><br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
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