Hmm, I do think I honestly believe that behavioral scientists might be worse than the average politician at predicting public response. Like, I am not totally confident, but I think I would take a 50% bet. So this strikes me as overall mildly bad (though not very bad, I don’t expect either of these two groups to be very good at doing this).
Habryka, is the reasoning that politicians have a real incentive to accurately predict public response—because it entirely determines whether they remain in power—whereas behavioral scientists have a much weaker incentive, compared to the dominant incentive of publishing significant results?
Hmm, I do think I honestly believe that behavioral scientists might be worse than the average politician at predicting public response. Like, I am not totally confident, but I think I would take a 50% bet. So this strikes me as overall mildly bad (though not very bad, I don’t expect either of these two groups to be very good at doing this).
Habryka, is the reasoning that politicians have a real incentive to accurately predict public response—because it entirely determines whether they remain in power—whereas behavioral scientists have a much weaker incentive, compared to the dominant incentive of publishing significant results?