Transcript

I was very excited to interview this psychologist of national repute. Philip Tetlock, Ph.D. did his doctoral work in social psychology at Yale University. Currently, he is Professor of Leadership at the University of California at Berkeley and he is also Acting Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in that university’s Haas School of Business. His new book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? was the subject of an excellent 3-page review in a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine. In his book, which is based on more than 20 years of research, he finds that experts in many fields make worse predictions than well-informed average citizens. While perhaps not totally surprising, this is still alarming given the extent to which nations around the globe listen to their own political “experts.” Among others, Dr. Tetlock cites The Conduct of Inquiry by Abraham Kaplan as a book on the philosophy of science that impacted his “thinking about thinking.” We close with a relevant and hopeful piece of podsafe music: “The Truth Is Still There” by the Australian Group, Buddha Nature.