On the Psychology of Prediction, I was particularly interested to hear about the existence of a ‘confidence interval’ as a psychological trait that surrounds human interpretation of predictions. Gilbert first brings up the example of weather predictions; if we’re told it is going to rain, we understand that it’s almost definitely going to rain, and yet on some level we won’t be surprised if it is a sunny day nevertheless. He states that this isn’t denial; rather a ‘little circle of uncertainty’ embodies an almost irrational manifestation of human hope, that good things could occur even against the odds. In the realm of climate change, this manifests on a major scale; there’s uncertainty surrounding global warming, even though most scientists are fairly sure we’re going to see serious impacts in the coming years. However, on the individual level, the “inherent uncertainty of prediction” allows us to, somewhat irrationally, not act on this impending catastrophe, because uncertainty catalyses hope within us, and motivates sometimes unreasonable individual choices. I believe this is particularly interesting when thinking about environmental policy, and the role that ‘truth’ has to play in representing predictions. There is the truth; that climate change is highly likely to continue to occur and worsen, and then there is the manner by which we interact with that truth; neither situation captures reality entirely, yet both are fundamentally interlinked with interpretation, behaviour, and thus futures. What does it mean, then, for political action to be truthful? What realm of truth should it occupy; the scientific, or the communal—where does the line lie between them, and is it possible for it to capture both?
Link to Dan Gilbert's interview
Hi Lauren!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I enjoyed reading your post and I was also surprised to hear about the “confidence interval” in regards to predictions. Before watching the interview with Dan Gilbert, I had only heard about confidence intervals in the context of statistics. It seems to me that “confidence intervals” in predictions exist in a space between qualitative-focused and quantitative-focused settings because we can use both quantitative and qualitative skills to formulate hypotheses about the future. I also like the questions that you posed! Expanding upon those questions, I wonder how people’s definitions of truth influence broader spaces. For example, if one politician views truth less rigorously than others, how will this impact the amount of information they share with the public? Further, I think there could be an argument that truth is more important in certain professions in comparison to others. Although truth is important in politics, one could argue that telling the truth is a lot more important in medicine or national defense.
Emily