Isn’t Tool 0 of forecasting ‘Mind your own business’?
In a nutshell, no.
Consider some practicalities. An advantage of forecasting world events is that it permits participation by a much broader population. I could run a forecasting contest on when the city of Paris will complete a construction project on the banks of the Seine, which is “my backyard” compared to Syria. Nobody would bother.
The point is to find out something about how you think, and comparing yourself to other people will yield information that you can’t get by sitting on your own, minding your own business. (On the other hand, there’s nothing preventing you from doing both.)
Finally, I’m not aware that people routinely make explicit, quantified forecasts even about their own business. Rather, it seems plain that most of the time, we think “probable” the things we would like to happen, and as a result fail to plan for contingencies we don’t like to think about.
To go from not forecasting at all to making forecasts in any domain is progress. It would certainly be useful to many to make forecasts about their daily lives (which I now do, a little bit). But let’s imagine this were taught in schools as a life skill: I suspect you would have people practicing precisely on events that they have no control over and that allow interpersonal comparison.
In a nutshell, no.
Consider some practicalities. An advantage of forecasting world events is that it permits participation by a much broader population. I could run a forecasting contest on when the city of Paris will complete a construction project on the banks of the Seine, which is “my backyard” compared to Syria. Nobody would bother.
The point is to find out something about how you think, and comparing yourself to other people will yield information that you can’t get by sitting on your own, minding your own business. (On the other hand, there’s nothing preventing you from doing both.)
Finally, I’m not aware that people routinely make explicit, quantified forecasts even about their own business. Rather, it seems plain that most of the time, we think “probable” the things we would like to happen, and as a result fail to plan for contingencies we don’t like to think about.
To go from not forecasting at all to making forecasts in any domain is progress. It would certainly be useful to many to make forecasts about their daily lives (which I now do, a little bit). But let’s imagine this were taught in schools as a life skill: I suspect you would have people practicing precisely on events that they have no control over and that allow interpersonal comparison.
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