Molly Hickman in Asterisk:
In my work as an analyst for the Forecasting Research Institute, and as a member of the forecasting collective Samotsvety, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to see how forecasters err. By and large, these mistakes fall into two categories. The first mistake is in trusting our preconceptions too much. The more we know — and the more confident we are in our knowledge — the easier it is to dismiss information that doesn’t conform to the opinions we already have. But there’s a more insidious second kind of error that bites forecasters — putting too much store in clever models that minimize the role of judgment. Just because there’s math doesn’t make it right.
More here.