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I'm politically very interested in what's happening and I used to read the
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fivethirtyeight blog that was done by nate silver he advertised for the good judgment project
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I was very steady I I answered as many questions as I could I was consistent I updated I didn't let anything get
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forgotten and I approached it like I was taking a test at school come in and maybe I didn't even study so but hey
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it's it's it's not an essay test so the choices are very clear its its its
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numbers and and dumb I would read the question carefully and analyze whether whether this would hinge on it on a
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single factor or many factors if it was something that I had a clear gut feeling
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right off the bat then I would decide how much to back off from that extreme and if it was something where I was
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really undecided at the 50 50 mark I would force myself to a choice because 50 50 is is it is never quite the right
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answer one of my hobbies is oil painting so and I and also when I've been taking
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the test they tell me I'm visuospatial so I I think that may have made a difference getting the big picture and
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knowing when to zoom in to the details backing off and then zooming in and not getting distracted by the wrong details
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so I've learned in painting that you have a big canvas you know you bake broad strokes but somehow sometimes just
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the tiny nuance here are there changes the way the whole painting looks and I think that's true in world events too
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and why you need a lot of different perspectives so that I love my news sources I have my favorite ones but when
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you get a variety and when you hear feedback from other forecasters it really helps
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I think that maybe the big thing is just to be aware of what you know what you can be certain of and what you're not
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sure of to know the difference between subjective and objective knowledge what things can be measured and what things
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are a matter of opinion look at history look at patterns look at base rates and then figure out whether your
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circumstance is similar or different I mean what's what was interesting for me
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is that most of the things I was forecasting on I knew nothing about going in finance questions for instance
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I I never pay attention to finance but when you're forecasting on world currencies you can always find graphs
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historical charts and I look at them and I see the patterns and I say why is it different now you know are we operating
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between the same extremes or will it be new and usually I've gone with stay with
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that stay with the trends so I didn't let myself get intimidated by any questions and I tried everything and his
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bill mentioned some of the things where I well actually was most hesitant on topics that I might have knowledge on
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say on Ebola because suddenly I do know i'm actually more self-conscious about
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things where I might miss something that I should know I think the tournament was great you
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need to practice so you need to have a lot of questions you need to have feedback you need to know where you're
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good and where you're messing up if you have a team if you have other people
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that you're in tournament either in competition or in collaboration either way you listen to them you get feedback
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and you will you will improve I use different words when I talk to myself now I've always been very
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analytic but now I I start talking those percentages to myself and and that's
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different I thought of the tournament like the there's a scene in the movie princess
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bride where the man in black is facing off against the the hyper confident vizzini and they propose a deadly
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drinking game and the line is you know that we shall see who is right and who is dead when we do forecasting
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tournaments the timelines are always very precise and many times in a season well you will be right or you will be
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dead so I kind of enjoy that analogy there were two big Ebola questions this year one was on whether a single case of
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Ebola would make it to the European Union and another question about whether the World Health Organization would
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declare Ebola contained within the countries that were most stricken that being Guinea Sierra Leone and Liberia
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those questions were entirely different even though they both dealt with Ebola what mattered was different for for
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transmission outside Africa and into the EU you were looking at healthcare workers and and plane routes how many
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people were going in and out and you need just a single case to set it up you