This reminds me of attempts to rate the accuracy of political pundits. Maybe this was in Superforecasting? Pundits are a sort of public intellectual. I wonder if one place to start with this intellectual-sabermetrics project would be looking for predictions in the writings of other intellectuals, and evaluating them for accuracy.
Expert Political Judgement discussed this. From what I remember they used a variety of “Experts”, many I believe were Academics. I believe these crossed over significantly with what we would think of as intellectuals.
I like the name “intellectual-sabermetrics”.
Luke Muehlhauser has been calling out people online for making bad predictions.
One common issue though is that many intellectuals are trained specifically not to communicate falsifiable predictions. They often try to word things in ways that seem confident, but are easy to argue against after the fact.
One common issue though is that many intellectuals are trained specifically not to communicate falsifiable predictions. They often try to word things in ways that seem confident, but are easy to argue against after the fact.
Yep.
And most pundits skill is not in accuracy, but in building an audience. Media want pundits to make outrageous statements for clickbait/stop channel changing. General public want pundits to validate their opinions.
If accuracy was actually a concern, they would already be held accountable. There are several fairly easy ways to do it, society just has chosen not to.
This reminds me of attempts to rate the accuracy of political pundits. Maybe this was in Superforecasting? Pundits are a sort of public intellectual. I wonder if one place to start with this intellectual-sabermetrics project would be looking for predictions in the writings of other intellectuals, and evaluating them for accuracy.
Expert Political Judgement discussed this. From what I remember they used a variety of “Experts”, many I believe were Academics. I believe these crossed over significantly with what we would think of as intellectuals.
I like the name “intellectual-sabermetrics”.
Luke Muehlhauser has been calling out people online for making bad predictions.
One common issue though is that many intellectuals are trained specifically not to communicate falsifiable predictions. They often try to word things in ways that seem confident, but are easy to argue against after the fact.
Thinking about this some more, I wonder if you could ever get to a place where pundits were looked down on for not making falsifiable predictions.
People with bad records and people who won’t go on record are both treated as second class.
Probably still too much to hope for.
Yep.
And most pundits skill is not in accuracy, but in building an audience. Media want pundits to make outrageous statements for clickbait/stop channel changing. General public want pundits to validate their opinions.
If accuracy was actually a concern, they would already be held accountable. There are several fairly easy ways to do it, society just has chosen not to.