Expert Political Judgment By Philip E. Tetlock
In the first three chapters of Expert Political Judgment: How good is it? How can we know?, the author, Philip E. Tetlock, attempts to determine what type of political judgment is good, and establish the difficulties in such assessments (Tetlock, 2005, p. 2, 19). Tetlock uses chapter one, “Quantifying the Unquantifiable,” to ascertain that it is challenging to evaluate the judgments that experts make when methods that are used to determine the performance of experts fail to focus on how experts think instead of on what they think (Tetlock, 2005, p. 1-2). Accordingly, Tetlock begins by acknowledging that determining the criteria through which it is possible to assess the accuracy of political judgment is a complicated pursuit due to an issue
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7). While the two tests provide a defined outline through which it is possible to determine whether judges are good, there may not be a feasible method through which the thinking process of the judges can be monitored while they are making political judgments. Even so, a focus on the process of thinking that judges use instead of on what they think in their judgment, helps focus the evaluation of political judgment on the actual process instead of solely on the result. Furthermore, by incorporating multiple methods through which to assess the issue in question and by providing a large sample of questions for many experts about multiple cases, Tetlock ensures that such a broad-minded approach can help limit bias and error in the results (Tetlock, 2005, p. 7-8). Tetlock also incorporates counterarguments and complaints that participating experts make concerning the measures of the procedure, which leads to the inclusion of various adjustments that address value, controversy, difficulty, and fuzzy-set aspects of questions that experts answered while being evaluated (Tetlock, 2005, p. 8-9). Consequently, by changing the process to include aspects that address issues in the methods, the author further improves the assessment of political judgment, although challenges still exist in ensuring that the judges forecast correctly while thinking in the acceptable way (Tetlock, 2005, p. 10,
7). While the two tests provide a defined outline through which it is possible to determine whether judges are good, there may not be a feasible method through which the thinking process of the judges can be monitored while they are making political judgments. Even so, a focus on the process of thinking that judges use instead of on what they think in their judgment, helps focus the evaluation of political judgment on the actual process instead of solely on the result. Furthermore, by incorporating multiple methods through which to assess the issue in question and by providing a large sample of questions for many experts about multiple cases, Tetlock ensures that such a broad-minded approach can help limit bias and error in the results (Tetlock, 2005, p. 7-8). Tetlock also incorporates counterarguments and complaints that participating experts make concerning the measures of the procedure, which leads to the inclusion of various adjustments that address value, controversy, difficulty, and fuzzy-set aspects of questions that experts answered while being evaluated (Tetlock, 2005, p. 8-9). Consequently, by changing the process to include aspects that address issues in the methods, the author further improves the assessment of political judgment, although challenges still exist in ensuring that the judges forecast correctly while thinking in the acceptable way (Tetlock, 2005, p. 10,