[ExI] quote of the day

[William Flynn Wallace]

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.

It's a great book.  Here are the characteristics of the model forecaster:

Cautious:  nothing is certain
Humble:  reality is infinitely complex
Nondeterministic:  what happens is not meant to be, in the sense of fate
Actively open-minded: beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasure to
be protected
Intelligent and knowledgeable, with a need for cognition:  intellectually
curious, enjoy puzzles and mental challenges
Reflective:  introspective and self-critical
Numerate:  comfortable with numbers (though curiously few used Bayes or any
other formula)
Pragmatic:  not wedded to any idea or agenda
Analytical: capable of stepping back from the tip of your nose perspective
and considering other views
Dragonfly-eyed:  value diverse views and synthesize them into their own
Probabilistic:  judge using many grades of maybe
Thoughtful updaters: when facts change, they change their minds
Good intuitive psychologists: aware of the value of checking thinking for
cognitive and emotional biases
Growth mindset:  believe it's possible to get better
Grit:  determined to keep at it however long it takes

For some questions they were posed, some changed their probability
estimates dozens of times as a result of further research

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.

That is three times as powerful a factor as intelligence.

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.

Interesting how the US Army changed completely after WWII to copy the
German Wehrmacht' attitude towards following orders

bill w

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 2:13 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
>
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> *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On
> Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 10, 2017 10:52 AM
> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>; Mary Van Antwerp <
> mavah at aol.com>; Robert Wallace <rwallace71 at gmail.com>; Joel Wallace <
> bagsofsand at gmail.com>; Angela <dyley at bellsouth.net>; Dylan Henderson <
> dch1997 at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* [ExI] quote of the day
>
>
>
> >…I have finally seen a definition of humility that I can say fits me:
>
>
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> >…Again, from Superforecasting:
>
>
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> >…'....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.'
>
>
>
> >…bill w
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> 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.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> It was ugly.
>
>
>
> spike
>
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