Why Quantitative Probability Assessments Are Empirically Justifiable in Foreign Policy Analysis
@inproceedings{Friedman2015WhyQP, title={Why Quantitative Probability Assessments Are Empirically Justifiable in Foreign Policy Analysis}, author={Jeffrey A. Friedman and Joshua D. Baker and Philip E. Tetlock and Richard J. Zeckhauser}, year={2015} }
Aristotle counseled us to seek precision insofar as the nature of the subject permits. But how much is too much? This article provides the first systematic test of long-standing debates about how precisely foreign policy analysts can estimate probabilities. Using a data set of 888,328 forecasts drawn from a series of geopolitical forecasting tournaments, we demonstrate that qualitative probability assessments, including seven-step scales employed by U.S. intelligence analysts, systematically…
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