Education Bookcast

Phillip Tetlock is an expert on expertise, but of a different kind to the late K. Anders Ericsson. While Ericsson's work focused on experts within "kind" domains (as defined by Range author David Epstein) such as music and chess, where feedback is near-immediate and clear and the rules are known to all and stated at the outset, Tetlock is interested in those who specialise in "wicked" domains, such as economics and politics. These are fields in which we can't run experiments or train for specific, recurring situations; where the rules are unknown; and where the situation at hand is not bounded, but can be influenced by a myriad of unpredictable forces. The author's most important finding is that cognitive style plays a major role in deciding who is good or bad at predicting world events. He reaches for Isaiah Berlin's concept of the Hedgehog and the Fox: "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Hedgehogs tend to view the world through their particular favourite lens, basking in the p