Predictions, prescience and the obvious

By Dave Anderson:

Crooked Timber has a good piece on punditry and predictions including the great trick of seeming bold without risk and the lack of accountability metrics for being wrong:

First � that the bold, innovative claims can�t be too bold, or too innovative. They certainly shouldn�t challenge basic precepts of American public debate such as the awesomeness of US world leadership. Even better if you can dress mutton as lamb, by presenting old chestnuts as if they were exciting, contrarian insights (a good half to two thirds of the average US policy journal consists of articles trying to pull off this trick, and usually failing).
Second, that the incentives to engage in careful hedging may be considerably weaker than Tetlock suggests. There aren�t any very good repositories of public memory in the arena of US public debate � pundits who have made grand pronouncements that turn out to be horribly wrong usually aren�t called on it. Here, blogs have served as a modest corrective, reminding op-ed writers of past confident assertions that they would likely have preferred to have remained buried. However, the emphasis here should be laid on the word �modest.� Amity Shlaes, Max Boot et al. still hold nice fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations, despite the scorn and ridicule that was rightly heaped upon their heads.

There is no cost to being wrong in the conservative establishment's direction, so we get a whole lot of crap and no accountability. Elite failure is being demonstrated in our public debate OODA loop.

Chris Briem, in a related matter of accountability and predictions, has been following the Pittsburgh pension and municipal finance crisis for years. He has gotten the basics of the crisis right on every count and has been banging the drum that something needs to be done. He notes that making these predictions did not rely upon great skill or unusual insights or limb-climbing. Instead, it was a matter of seeing and then stating the obvious:

How bad is the the situation? I've gone through the numbers. The state is declaring the system bankrupt already. Even thought the city was still denying there was a problem recently they announced late yesterday it is going to go ahead and try to sell the city's parking assets as fast as they can. As best I can tell, even if the city sells the parking assets and nets out $200 million after debt is paid off, and if all of that goes directly into the pension fund, the pension system will still be well under 50% of the funding ratio that the state is using as a threshold that the new legislation will require....

I really don't claim to be prescient at all. Most of what I say here is just documenting the obvious. Problem in town is lots of folks like to deny the obvious. The path here has been awfully clear for some time. Anyone who has ever looked at the pension numbers knew this day was coming. It is NOT about the stock market decline at all last year. That may have altered the timing a bit is all. What has been amazing is that it has so thoroughly been ignored for so long.

Stating the obvious should be encouraged, rewarded and common-place. It is not, so it is relegated to the margins as the very serious people are consistently shocked when the obvious bites them in the ass.