Author: JohnMatel

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Super-forcasting


Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

A New York Times Bestseller”The most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.”—Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal   Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether…

amazon.com

I went to see Phillip Tetlock at AEI last night. Tetlock built his reputation by assessing the actual ability of experts to predict complex political and societal trends. His research showed the experts were not much better, and sometimes not as good, as random chance.

Blind monkey can beat the experts in actual predictions.  Experts add value by framing questions and identifying options
The classic monkey throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal can often beat the stock pickers. This result is not a damning as it appears on the face. Experts may be good at framing questions, which is really the hardest part of decision making, and identifying options. The dark flinging monkey has a simpler problem set, one already designed by experts.

Bayesian better
Predictions could also be improved by using a Bayesian approach, i.e. continually integrating new information, and speaking in terms of probabilities rather than “could happen.” The biggest impediment to experts doing this was their dislike of being seen to be uncertain or changing their minds. The prognosticators or prognosticators should not flip flop, even if it improves their outcomes. As a result, most experts talk more in vague “could be” rather than actionable probabilities and can trim their predictions to the results.

Most social studies studies cannot be replicated
Unfortunately, the social sciences are full of bad studies. Recent research indicated that 2/3 of published studies in the social sciences could not be replicated, i.e. were probably wrong. There is signification bias at work and it is difficult to overestimate the power of preconceptions to shape perceptions. Bayesian analysis does not eliminate biases or preconceptions, but does make them explicit and so testable and so subject to modification and inspiring learning. You cannot improve if you don’t keep score. This is a score keeping.

“Good Judgement Project”
Tetlock was actually at AEI to talk about his new book, “Superforcasting: the Art and Science of Prediction,” in which he described his IARPA funded “Good Judgement Project.” It was kind of a tournament of prediction. The only criterion was the accuracy of the predictions. They started with the base rate. Recall that even a broken clock is right twice a day and a random guess will sometimes produce a correct result. For illustration, a base rate of 25% would be the expected outcome if you took a multiple choice test where all the questions had four choices. For the tournament they tried to choose things that could be known in the passage of time and not subject to lots of interpretation. They also wanted events in the “Goldilocks zone,” i.e. not something so simple that results could be predicted with certainty using equations and past experience, and not something completely random like a fair roulette wheel, where any patterns you identified would be mistakes.
They were looking for elite “superforcasters.” Tetlock joked that he was not trying to be inclusive in the results, since some people would just be better than others, but the tournament was open to all with the best rising to the top.

Let them try and see who does it best
The tournament was a proof of concept. Predictions can be made better, although never perfect. Success superforcasters tended to be quick to learn from their mistakes and adjust and took into account a wider variety of information sources. It really does help to have discordant and even unpleasant information. You cannot make sound decisions if you are afraid to offend someone. But recall that the person with the extreme view is sometimes right and usually useful, but for the most part the probabilities work, i.e. the random weirdo is unlikely to be Einstein.

In many ways, the new science or methods of forecasting are disruptive work against established experts and so difficult to plant in an organization that has a hierarchy. The best results may come from people of lower status. They have the advantage of not having bought into the current reality.

Don’t mistake ONE common man for THE common man
Again, we do not want to take more from this lesson than it has to teach. The headline that “Common folks beat the experts” is misleading. THE common folks (in the aggregate of the masses) can produce lots of good ideas but the chances of A (i.e. any particular) common man doing so is a low probability outcome. If you take too much advice from the common man you met on the street, you will soon get grief – and deserve the grief you get.
Anyway, I bought the book (paid more for the honor of buying it at the event) and will read it. What I heard tracks with lots of what I have read about decision-making. Of course, it might be a false correlation, since Tetlock has been a source for many other things I have read and/or much of what I have read (guys like Kahneman and Tversky) have influenced Tetlock. I suppose they would call that confirmation bias.

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Sand hills and longleaf pines

Took a side trip up through the sand hills in South Carolina and up into North Carolina, mostly following old US 1. It is a truly delightful area with lots of big pines and hardwood mix. I started off in the Sand Hill State Forest in South Carolina. There were logging operations in process and they clearly manage the forest very well. Use of fire is evident. The big longleaf pines remind me of the ponderosa pines in the West. It looks like snow in my pictures. That is the sand that gives the region its name and which probably explains why it is still in forest.

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White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia

Went to the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. Food was good, especially an excellent mushroom soup. They make a big deal about being a farm to table place, with most of the food coming from the local area. As our modern world becomes more homogeneous, people are looking for more authentic experiences, what you might call the back stories for their products. This applies especially to food.

Food is intimate and eating is or can be) a focal activity, one that adds meaning. If you are what you eat you eat what you are, or what becomes you. I do not believe locally grown organic food is better for health or necessarily for the environment. But I do like the idea that people might be involved with the production of food they eat and might be willing to pay a little more for the connection to local food producers. Relationships count.

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University of Pennsylvania on Friday

I took the train to the University of Pennsylvania on Friday to talk to James McGann, who runs the Think Tanks& Civil Societies Program there. It was an interesting meeting. Besides talking with McGann, I got to talk to his students about Foreign Service. I am always glad to talk to smart young people, restores my faith in the future.

Here are some pictures from the trip, except for the last one, which is a picture of a little green space near State Department, a good place to have lunch.

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Forest visit October 2015

I took Mariza down to the farms to show her around and have a look at the longleaf plantation. The longleaf are doing extraordinarily well. The one I am standing near is one of the bigger ones, but most are well along. I am 6’1”, so you can see the comparison. These trees were planted in 2012. Not bad.

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Farm visit October 2015

More from the farms. Mariza and I also looked at the recent cut over. Not much of my clover has come up near the roads, but I was surprised how much had grown since the cut only a few months ago. Lots of the plants are from plants whose seeds blow easily in the wind; others are from roots long shaded int eh old forest or dormant seeds. We will plant 30 acres of loblolly, 15 acres of longleaf and an acre of cypress early next spring. I also have included a photo of the bald cypress I planted a few years ago along one of the streams It is one of my “pet” trees and I take special care of it.        

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What is native?

Our bacon and eggs breakfast comes to us thanks to “invasive species.” Pigs, cows, chickens, honeybees, wheat, and apples (Johnny Appleseed was a wholesale purveyor of invasive species) all came from somewhere else and displaced natives. The problem with invasives comes when they disrupt long-established relationships in ways we find harmful. Our tree farms are full of invasive species, wanted and unwanted. Maybe we plant clover to protect soil after a harvest. That same clover is invasive in other circumstances. We fight invasive species like kudzu, multiflora rose and ailanthus, but recall that they came with the enthusiastic support of experts and often through government programs.

We need to develop a more nuanced view of invasive and native. Native is not always better or even really native. Much of the loblolly that we plant in Virginia, for example, comes from genetic stock “native” farther south, modified by select breeding and scarcely resembling the multi-branched, twisted natives of times past. Human activity has changed the game. Virginia’s environment today is far different from 1607. Natives exquisitely adapted to old Virginia may be less appropriate in the future.

This does not imply that we should be unconcerned about invasive species. Their proliferation is the single biggest threat to our forests. Global commerce is increasingly bringing species long-separated into intimate contact, sometimes with catastrophic results. We must be vigilant against the introduction of pests, but know that nasties like longhorn beetles, emerald ash borers, Formosan termites and wooly adelgids will continue to slip through. The rate of natural adaptation is too slow to cope with the rapid introduction of exotic species and altered environments. Humans will need to step in to move some species to new “native” range and work with breeding, even genetic modifications, to protect important species from threats unknown in their earlier evolution. A good example is an American chestnut resistant to the blight that killed whole forests early in the 20th Century; we can restore the tree in its former glory with minimal modification, rather than wait thousands of years for natural selection to produce something else.

Let’s talk options. “Natural and native” is not an option except in isolated areas maintained – ironically – by extraordinary human intervention. “Letting nature take its course” will result in a mess of invasive species in unsustainable and often harmful relationships. Conversely, overactive human management will quickly demonstrate the limits of our wisdom. Recall the kudzu and multiflora rose are with us today because of somebody’s big ideas. There is no single plan. The best choice is what good land managers do: work with natural processes but recognize that the very nature of our work changes them. It’s an iterative, adaptive learning process with a goal of dynamic sustainability that strives not to avoid change but to make it reasonably predictable and benign – simple to say; hard to do. It requires patience, persistence and humility. Details are unknowable in advance, since information is discovered only through experience and often has only local or temporary applicability. It is more a process than a plan, one that relies the intelligence, imagination and innovation of landowners, firms, researchers and government agencies, knowing that none of them will have the answer, but that the many answers will sustain our beloved Virginia ecosystems. Some will not be native.

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Cheap gas at Loves

We drove down to the farms, as I mentioned in an earlier post. I always stop at the Loves station at exit 104 on I95. Gas prices south of the Rappahannock are much lower than in Northern Virginia.

 

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September 2015 Forest Visit Brunswick County

We went down to the farms to plant clover on the new cut over, especially on near the trails, where there is more bare dirt. I was surprised how much had grown up by itself since the land was cut in July. Some is hardwoods sprouted from roots, but other plants are coming up from long-dormant seeds. The clover will hold the soil, provide nitrogen and be good wildlife forage. We will plant new trees in spring, about 400 per acre, thirty acres loblolly and fifteen longleaf and one acre of bald cypress. Loblolly will also seed in from the neighboring trees. In fact, left to their own devices, the loblolly would fill in by itself. It would take a little longer and we would not have the same quality trees, however.

Espen, Alex and Colin helped throw the seed. We did it by hand mostly as a form of performance art. I wanted them to be a part of the regeneration. Probably by the next time we do it, drones will handle much of the job.

I also did some work on our longleaf pine experimental plot. We have about five acres planted in 2012. The trees are doing okay. They have moved out of the grass stage (longleaf look like tufts of grass sometimes for a couple years before the bolt out) and some are now around eight feet high. They did a very good job o site preparation, so there is not too much competing hardwood. I did have to take down a couple dozen volunteer loblolly, however. It is kind of sad for me. If those same trees were growing a little distance away I would be delighted to have them.

It is hard work and I am getting a little too old and weak. The next day there were few places on my body that didn’t hurt. I still do the work with hand tools. I suppose I could succumb to modernity and get tools powered by something other than my aging and now aching muscles.

The first picture shows the little longleaf, now in their third year on site. Next is the new clear cut, 46 acres that we will plant next spring. After that are 19-year-old loblolly across from the longleaf. They were thinned in winter 2010-2011 and I think we will do a second thinning in 2017. The first thinning did them a lot of good and the forest is very robust. The last picture is our place on SR 623. The wildlife meadow has quail. Those tree are 11-years-old loblolly. When we got the place, it looks a lot like that clear cut. You can see the forest evolution in the pictures.

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Forest visits September 2015

We went down to the farms to plant clover on the new cut over, especially on near the trails, where there is more bare dirt. I was surprised how much had grown up by itself since the land was cut in July. Some is hardwoods sprouted from roots, but other plants are coming up from long-dormant seeds. The clover will hold the soil, provide nitrogen and be good wildlife forage. We will plant new trees in spring, about 400 per acre, thirty acres loblolly and fifteen longleaf and one acre of bald cypress. Loblolly will also seed in from the neighboring trees. In fact, left to their own devices, the loblolly would fill in by itself. It would take a little longer and we would not have the same quality trees, however.

Espen, Alex and Colin helped throw the seed. We did it by hand mostly as a form of performance art. I wanted them to be a part of the regeneration. Probably by the next time we do it, drones will handle much of the job.

I also did some work on our longleaf pine experimental plot. We have about five acres planted in 2012. The trees are doing okay. They have moved out of the grass stage (longleaf look like tufts of grass sometimes for a couple years before the bolt out) and some are now around eight feet high. They did a very good job o site preparation, so there is not too much competing hardwood. I did have to take down a couple dozen volunteer loblolly, however. It is kind of sad for me. If those same trees were growing a little distance away I would be delighted to have them.

It is hard work and I am getting a little too old and weak. The next day there were few places on my body that didn’t hurt. I still do the work with hand tools. I suppose I could succumb to modernity and get tools powered by something other than my aging and now aching muscles.

The first picture shows the little longleaf, now in their third year on site. Next is the new clear cut, 46 acres that we will plant next spring. After that are 19-year-old loblolly across from the longleaf. They were thinned in winter 2010-2011 and I think we will do a second thinning in 2017. The first thinning did them a lot of good and the forest is very robust. The last picture is our place on SR 623. The wildlife meadow has quail. Those tree are 11-years-old loblolly. When we got the place, it looks a lot like that clear cut. You can see the forest evolution in the pictures.