… The first book is from Philip Tetlock, and the second is from Isaiah Berlin.

And, now, Hal Finney (whose name doesn’t appear on the Overcoming Bias blog post, due to a technical glitch that our good doctor Robin Hanson should correct real quick, in my view, and how come it’s not corrected already, he’s napping or what?):

One of Tetlock’s discoveries is that there is a significant correlation between expert prediction accuracy and a cognitive style measure introduced by Isaiah Berlin called “fox” vs “hedgehog”.
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The hedgehog is said to know one thing and know it well. He sees events and trends in terms of his big idea, and aggressively extends it into new realms. Hedgehogs tend to be confident in the applicability of their fundamental concepts and impatient with those who “do not get it”.

Foxes in contrast know many small things which they bring to bear in their analyses in a dynamical and flexible way. They tend to be uncertain and flexible, “on the other hand” types who are skeptical about their own predictive ability and in fact about the whole enterprise of making predictions in such an intractable realm.

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Technical Note: I have just found out that Overcoming Bias dot com is a fluid website. GREAT. (See my previous rant against non-fluid websites.)

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Technical Quizz: If the Hal Finney’s name does not appear on his blog post, on the website, then how come this little rascal of Chris Masse knows it’s him who authored the blog post? Google Reader displays the blog authors’s names. GOOGLE’S MORE INGENIOUS THAN ROBIN HANSON.

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Previous Blog Post:

- Overcoming Bias dot com = Robin Hanson’s group blog on truth discovery and decision rationality

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Addendum (November 23): Great post from Mike Linksvayer…