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....'"And"...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..."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.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.