Bold predictions are the preserve of journalists who believe they are qualified, on the basis of their 'inside' dope, to lecture the world on the real state of their wretched society; of how it would be a thousand times better only if others listened to them. In this line of work, they are supposed to know. How can they not when the first thing you will ask that journalist friend of yours the next time you meet is when India will, as the rumor has it, re-impose the blockade.
So they will tell you. India can't by itself impose it. For the purpose it will first have to find suitable pawns in Nepal. Now these pawns have their own agendas and they don't always follow India's diktat. And some of the pawns are not pawns at all (go figure). And now, Mr Oli is going to China, where he will be extending his begging bowl for all kinds of goodies. What will he get? How will India react to what he gets? Wait! Will Oli even be the prime minister by the time of his scheduled trip to Beijing?
Taken in isolation, these questions might seem easy. But take them all up at once—which is what you must do to get your prediction of the future blockade right—and they are nigh on impossible to answer. But if that journalist friend of yours tells you he has no clue, what will you think of him? What will you think of his profession? So he better cook sometime up, fast, to prove to you that he most certainly doesn't belong to the class of chimps whose dart-throwing accuracy Tetlock generously compares to expert predictions in social sciences.
Tetlock should know. The University of Pennsylvania social scientist has spent most of his life trying to track the predictive power of top political scientists and economists from around the globe, including many Nobel Prize winners. After tracking their performance over 20 years, he found that these supposed experts were worse than randomly picked persons from the street at predicting the outcomes of important events like the fall of communism in former USSR, 9/11 or the Great Depression. But surely he is wrong. If a journalist has spent half his life closely following, say, Nepali Congress, he should be in the best position to predict who will be the next party president. That, at least, is the theory.
In practice, what happens is that the more we think we know about an issue, the lesser we feel the need to consult others, who, in any case, are less informed on the subject. In time we build little circles of like-minded people and learn to tune out bothersome critics. This self-justifying cycle is dangerous, Tetlock warns.
In his new book with coauthor Dan Gardner, Superforecasting, Tetlock asks his readers to assign numbers to their predictions rather than speak in generalities. So if you believe Deuba will be the next Congress president, you say he has '90 percent change of winning' instead of the vague he has 'a great chance of winning.' This will help you keep track of your predictive powers and to learn how to improve your odds of getting it right the next time you make similar predictions. But if you say Deuba has 90 percent change of winning and he loses, won't others hold the 90 percent against you for the rest of your life?
On the other hand, if you carefully couch your predictions behind generalities like 'great' and 'fair', you can always claim you had your doubts. In any case, 'great chance' does not mean '90 percent'; in your case, it's more like 60 percent, right?
Tetlock also thinks we are all ruled by our bias. You say Deuba has 90 percent change of winning not because that is what your painstaking analysis shows (who has the time!) but because you just like the guy, you know, even if he doesn't speak that clearly, even if he has no ideological base, even if he is a little corrupt. I mean, aren't all human beings fallible? So why expect godly qualities of Deuba? The onus is clearly on Ram Chandra Poudel to prove that he is lesser of the rascals.
Crazy, the kind of delusions people have. I was watching a blockade-era Indian talk show over YouTube the other day. The Indian panelists kept arguing that since the Himalayas cannot be moved, it is futile for Nepal to try to play the China card. But even as they were speaking the Chinese were laying the tracks to extend the rail link to Keyrung, right on the border with Nepal. The Nepal Army is working on all-weather roads to Tibet. Their views constantly reinforced in their little echo chambers, they know nothing. Zilch. On the other hand, our illustrious history is testament to the fact that the Bir Gorkhalis are nearly not as myopic.
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