People who slightly and frequently adjust their
estimates about how likely something is to happen, based on new information,
are much more likely to end up calling events correctly than are people who
don't change their mind ever or who flip-flop more dramatically.
- Zack
Beauchamp, This
study tried to improve our ability to predict major geopolitical events.
It worked. (Vox)
Having an open mind means somebody is always trying
to put things inside it. Some things that get inside change your mind. Now a
study has proved that being rigidly certain of everything – of anything – makes
a person less able to predict major world events. By which I mean, correctly predict important
shit.
Philip Tetlock one of the scientists conducting the study, said, "I would say that if you have a tool that can
increase the accuracy of probability estimates — by 30, 40, 50, 60 percent— as
much as has been demonstrated in the IARPA tournaments, it's worth investing
many millions of dollars even to reduce, to a small degree, the probability of
multitrillion-dollar mistakes."So changing your mind about stuff is a good thing. Not to mention, having decent intelligence (in both the predictive and intellectual sense) would probably save lives.
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