Philip E. Tetlock Quotes.

1. "How you think matters more than what you think"
- Quote by Philip E. Tetlock

2. "For scientists, not knowing is exciting. It’s an opportunity to discover; the more that is unknown, the greater the opportunity."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

3. "It follows that the goal of forecasting is not to see what’s coming. It is to advance the interests of the forecaster and the forecaster’s tribe."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

4. "All models are wrong, the statistician George Box observed, but some are useful."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

5. "Suppose someone says, Unfortunately, the popularity of soccer, the world’s favorite pastime, is starting to decline. You suspect he is wrong. How do you question the claim? Don’t even think of taking a personal shot like You’re silly. That only adds heat, not light. I don’t think so only expresses disagreement without delving into why you disagree. What do you mean? lowers the emotional temperature with a question but it’s much too vague. Zero in. You might say, What do you mean by ‘pastime’? or What evidence is there that soccer’s popularity is declining? Over what time frame? The answers to these precise questions won’t settle the matter, but they will reveal the thinking behind the conclusion so it can be probed and tested. Since Socrates, good teachers have practiced precision questioning, but still it’s often not used when it’s needed most. Imagine how events might have gone if the Kennedy team had engaged in precision questioning when planning the Bay of Pigs invasion: So what happens if they’re attacked and the plan falls apart? They retreat into the Escambray Mountains, where they can meet up with other anti-Castro forces and plan guerrilla operations. How far is it from the proposed landing site in the Bay of Pigs to the Escambray Mountains? Eighty miles. And what’s the terrain? Mostly swamp and jungle. So the guerrillas have been attacked. The plan has fallen apart. They don’t have helicopters or tanks. But they have to cross eighty miles of swamp and jungle before they can begin to look for shelter in the mountains? Is that correct? I suspect that this conversation would not have concluded sounds good! Questioning like that didn’t happen, so Kennedy’s first major decision as president was a fiasco. The lesson was learned, resulting in the robust but respectful debates of the Cuban missile crisis—which exemplified the spirit we encouraged among our forecasters."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

6. "Churchill sent Keynes a cable reading, ‘Am coming around to your point of view.’ His Lordship replied, ‘Sorry to hear it. Have started to change my mind.’ 7"
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

7. "Be careful about making assumptions of expertise, ask experts if you can find them, reexamine your assumptions from time to time."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

8. "And yet this stagnation is a big reason why I am an optimistic skeptic. We know that in so much of what people want to predict—politics, economics, finance, business, technology, daily life—predictability exists, to some degree, in some circumstances. But there is so much else we do not know."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

9. "There is no divinely mandated link between morality and competence."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

10. "All who drink of this treatment recover in a short time, except those whom it does not help, who all die, he wrote. It is obvious, therefore, that it fails only in incurable cases."
- Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction