Tetlock: Why Did the Amateurs Do Better Than the Experts?

Tetlock has several reasons why amateurs learned to make better predictions than experts. But far and away the most important was humility—and I'll say, really, his humility sounds a lot like curiosity. The amateurs who stuck it out and improved the most were the ones who reacted with interest and curiosity when they were caught being wrong. They would dig back and see what happened, not to defend but to learn. It is almost as though they took pleasure in finding they were wrong. By contrast—in my unscientific terms and having read Tetlock a long time ago—it seemed as though the experts tended to get stuck. So they had more information than the amateurs, but they didn't use it as well. They could have had insights that would help them do better next time, but they couldn't learn from their errors with the same humility as the amateurs had. It is almost as though being an 'expert' worked against their ability to learn.