NonProphets

NonProphets


Ep. 52: Kathryn Cochran on Designing Good Forecasting Questions

February 14, 2018

Episode 52 of the NonProphets podcast, in which Atief and Robert interview Good Judgment Chief Scientist Kathryn Cochran, who leads Good Judgment's question development team, about the nuts and bolts of forecasting. We talk about how forecasts can improve adaptability (09:41); how we would craft clear, meaningful forecasting questions for a hypothetical involving Venezuela and Brazil (13:46); what we can learn from the question design and clarification process (21:18); the rigor-relevance tradeoff (26:52); a collectively painful forecasting experience from years ago (28:35); the collateral benefits of forecasting (37:05); the value of question clusters (44:17); how forecasting has affected how we see the world (55:41); and what Dr. Cochran would do to improve the forecasting ability of the US intelligence community (58:41). As always, you may reach us at nonprophetspod.wordpress.com, or nonprophetspod@gmail.com.  (recorded 1/23/2018)