"Elaine Rich is a pharmacist in her 60s. She and a team of 3,000 other amateur forecasters in the Good Judgment Project (GJP) use Google to keep current on the news. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employs over 20,000 professionals, operates with an annual budget north of $14 billion, and has access to oodles of classified information.
Which of these groups is better at predicting world affairs?
When it comes to “everything from Venezuelan gas subsidies to North Korean politics,” reports National Public Radio (NPR), amateurs outperform the pros."...
Woo hoo. A lot of amateur stock traders can say the same thing.
Might the CIA sometimes
"guess" wrong because if they overestimate threats they get a bigger budget?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
