A great read by @effortfuleduktr on the massively shared and quoted study predicting the future of skills.
— Kiran Johny (@johnywrites) November 4, 2018
Features I see : Use of causal logic in complex domains were variables are unknown, + Predicting the disappearance of fundamental skills or brain faculties. https://t.co/7nZJRfEDsi
The above article analyzes the job skill outlook report by World Economic Forum named “The Future of Jobs Report 2018” .
My tweet include two things.
The predictions done by various experts and the reaction from domain experts are both problematic because of the complex nature of modern problems.
Philip Tetlock, of the University of Pennsylvania, did a study on the accuracy of forecasts going back 25 years.
He collected 82,000 forecasts against real-world outcomes from nearly 300 academics, economists, policymakers and journalists.
Tetlock asked a group of pundits and foreign affairs experts to predict geopolitical events, like whether the Soviet Union would disintegrate by 1993.
Overall, the “experts” struggled to perform better than “dart-throwing chimps”, and were consistently less accurate than even relatively simple statistical algorithms.
This was true of liberals and conservatives, and regardless of professional credentials.
However, Tetlock found one particular type of thinking that produced much better prediction.
The experts who considered multiple explanations and balance them(average) together before making a prediction functioned better than those who relied on a single perspective.
Tetlock called the first group foxes( Multiple perspectives) and,
the second group hedgehogs( single perspective)
JohnyWrites.com 