Politicians, business leaders, and so-called experts and pundits are
Insiders with stakes in public decisions. They use tricks to rig things in their favor.
Outsiders have a stake in the action and a role to play but how can they cut through the flimflam to see what should be done? Sherman Stein's
Survival Guide for Outsiders has the answer. Stein begins with
The Model: how we interpret what is out there. He shows how
Insiders shape our opinions by omission and misrepresentation. An argument that smells fishy is probably the
Dead Fish you thought it was. Often forming
No Opinion is the best course. Stein shows that in many situations there is no “best policy,” but rather we have a choice between
Incomparables. He shows how
Hidden Choices often guide us. He shows the uses and misuses of
Number to guide policy, with special attention to probabilities and the
GRIMP (Gigantic Risk with Incredibly Minute Probability). All policy is influenced by experts, some of whom act as shamans, providing vision and assurance that things will work as planned, while others serve as pros – such as the engineers or doctors on whom we count for their knowledge and skills. Sherman Stein looks at the record of expert judgment and finds it often wrong. His case studies reinforce Philip Tetlock’s
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? Summing up, Stein shows how
The Action Principle drives us to do something when we would be better off not acting. He outlines our Limits, concluding on a note of
Good Cheer.
CONTENTS
The Journey.
Perception: How Things Appear.
- The Model and Us Frivolous Ones
- The Bull's Eye and the Rings
- Veneer
- Distortion by Omission
- Distortion by Commission
- The Art of No opinion
- The Dead-Fish Principle
Choice: How we Decide.
- The Incomparables
- Hidden Choice
Number: The Influence of Numbers on Policy.}
- Beware the Number
- Second Warning about Numbers
- Third Warning about Numbers
- Where Did That Number Come From?
- A Scale for Uncertainty
- It Will Definitely Happen, Perhaps
- Just Try to Measure It
- The GRIMP
- What Is a Job?
- The Professional and the Shaman
- Expert Creep
- Telling a professional from a Shaman
- The Shaman-Layman Contract
- The Audit
- Spinoff and Side Effect
- The Scientific Method
- Prophecy: Modeling the Future
- Casual Audits
- Serious Audits
- The Action Syndrome
- Limits
- Be of Good Cheer
- Notes
- Indexes