A Failure, but Not of Prediction
"First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right... 'Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis....'"<p>And<p>"...they didn’t beat the experts in epidemiology. Whatever probability of pandemic the experts and prediction markets gave for coronavirus getting really bad, these people didn’t necessarily give a higher probability. They were just better at probabilistic reasoning, so they had different reactions to the same number..."<p>I noticed that. As a math person, things were exceptionally clear at a point, clearer than many uncertain events tbh. Simple exponential growth this, I can understand ... and so could a significant slice of people.<p>But my question is: if epidemiologists aren't experts at THIS, wtf are they experts in? Isn't this exactly the "classic" circumstance any average epidemiologist should be a able to see in a heartbeat. Apparently not, so what do they train these people in? Question maybe half rhetorical but also serious. What's "expert knowledge" in these circumstances.