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well in my work on security a big part of the question is whose security might be in danger in the coming years so
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secure this field of security studies inherently is about forecasting making predictions about how actors might be
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vulnerable what strategies might help them and so forth so I got interested in the good judgment project because I
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wanted to build these skills well I think there were a couple of factors one was that I am in the middle
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of my career now and I've spent a lot of time studying exactly the kind of issues
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that the good judgment project was focusing on and so I was familiar with trade issues I was familiar with
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national security issues the rise and fall of governments that kind of thing so it really was right in my issue area
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also I I use a theory that can be well applied in this kind of situation it's
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called structural realist theory and it gives a sense of big recurring outcomes and international relations the rise and
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fall of great powers the tendency for military conflict to occur competition and trade and so forth and so I had a
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kind of broad understanding of International Affairs that I could apply to particular situations and the beauty
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of this theory was that it was it's really pretty open states have a lot of choices about how they act and so I
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wasn't falling into the trap of thinking that something was inevitable but instead was investigating which things
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were more likely which things were less likely so this theory was really conducive to probabilistic forecasting
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and my background knowledge was really helpful in having a big set of information to draw from and also
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knowledge about where to find things where to find information that would be helpful
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well the first thing was to really explore my biases to realize that I often would have a first impulse about a
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question and I didn't want to just go with that sometimes it was right but I
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didn't want to just go on impulse and secondly I really learned to think about
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what my strengths were to focus on questions that I thought were in my area of strength and in particular to focus
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on questions that I thought were were being answered wrong or you know where the the general consensus was different
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from what I thought it was because there I could make the most difference in shifting opinion or contributing
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knowledge that might sway the crowd and make the group as a whole more accurate so I think those things are really
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important well every year in the tournament I kept a running list of what questions I'd
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answered when i first answered them how i first answered them and it was really helpful to see how my opinion changed
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his new information came along so I was all kind of keeping myself honest about what was my original opinion and what
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was making me change my mind and I think that was really helpful because I learned a lot about what kind of pits I
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might fall into you know if I get over optimistic about suddenly there's a lot
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of news on a certain issue I might have a tendency to think that something was more likely to happen whereas maybe
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wasn't really more likely to happen so keeping track of my predictions was very
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helpful I thought it was really important that i was at forecasting anonymously at first it made it more i
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made me more confident about making predictions without worrying about their effect on my reputation and after all
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you know i was in this to get better about forecasting so i wanted to have the ability to take to make bets or you
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know answer questions in a way that i thought was correct without worrying about how that might be seen somewhere
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else and that really built up my confidence and actually through being right then frequently to it built up my
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confidence to the point that i was willing to reveal who i was and then got to experience the whole other dynamic of
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people knowing I was an expert wondering what I thought about things and then having to be cautious about not relying
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too much on my expert knowledge but still thinking about the wisdom of the crowd so I think the anonymity is really
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important and also realizing that the magic of this whole study is in revealing that everybody has important
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information and at different times different people's information will be really valid and especially important
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and finding that right balance between being confident in your own views and and being open to the views of others
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so in my work this experience has been extremely important I am now working on an article about the rise of China that
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I would not have written if it had not been from my experience in the good judgment project by having to constantly
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update my knowledge about China's economic capabilities and its military capabilities in order to do well in this
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game I kept up at a much finer green level with things that were happening in China and that have changed my forecast
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about how international relations will work over the next couple of decades so I'm an international relations scholar
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one of the most important things in the international relations field right now is this question of of does the United
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States have peer competitors is China one yet and this experience helped me see that it is so it's really
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dramatically changed my career and the process of going through the confidence building process of you know learning
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how to articulate forecasts learning how to be how to express them in probabilistic terms how to be confident
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even if I'm not completely sure has made me willing to take the risk of going out
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on this really controversial subject you