The fox and the hedgehog: predicting the future

nOver at the IdeaPort blog, Roger Dennis points to a Long Now Foundation podcast from Philip Tetlock, who explains how people making predictions about the future can be divided into two separate camps: foxes and hedgehogs. Within any organization, a change in the mix of foxes and hedgehogs can lead to widely differing views about the future:

“[Philip Tetlock] categorises experts intontwo camps: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes have many tricks (i.e. expertsnthat cover broad areas) while a hedgehog has but one trick (i.e. a deepnsubject matter expert).

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Tetlock examines the accuracy of thesentwo groups across a range of different criteria. It’s fascinating, andnespecially relevant for my work on the Technology Futures programme.

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We’ve found that the mix of foxes and hedgehogs in any one large group can dramatically alter the buzz of an event.

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Asna sidenote Tetlock has been quite clever in selecting the two animalsnuse as illustrations. The imagery behind the choice is strong, and youncould conceivably label someone a hedgehog without incurring theirnwrath. After all, rolling into a spiky ball is quite clever. You couldnnot really say the same if you labeled someone a slug, a flatworm or a hagfish (despite the fact that a hagfish has a couple of neat tricks too)…”

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Anyway, as might be expected, foxes make better predictors than hedgehogs.

[image: The fox and the hedgehog]