Good Judgment Project: A Political-Economic Forecasting Tournament

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution received An email from Philip Tetlock recently seeking out new “volunteer[s] for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) forecasting tournament.” Tetlock touts the success of the tournament so far:

The Year 1 results are in–and they contained more than a few surprises. Most surprising was how well our forecasters performed. They collectively blew the lid off the performance expectations that IARPA had for the first year.

I’m happy to say that I was one of the first year participants and found the experience very rewarding. Although personal time constraints often got in the way, the experience was very intellectually stimulating. The questions encouraged thinking about the political economy of many countries that were unlikely to have otherwise been on my radar. Whether it was luck or skill I’m not sure, but I actually managed to finish in 19th place within my group (of a few hundred?).

Tetlock suggests the best forecasters:

are distinguished by three characteristics: (1) an intense curiosity about the workings of the political-economic world; (2) an intense curiosity about the workings of the human mind; (3) cognitive crunching power (“fluid intelligence” and a capacity for “timely self correction”).

If those characteristics resonate with you, I suggest checking out the registration page at
www.goodjudgmentproject.com/register.

Good luck to any future participants/competitors!


Update - Here's a good post from Steve Roth at Angry Bear on Tetlock's book and the Good Judgment Project:The Top Two Criteria for Expert Judgment: Curiosity and . . . Curiosity