judgement
The dragonfly eye
The rule
Gather many different, even clashing, views and blend them into one. Many eyes see more than one, like a dragonfly's eye.
Where it flips
But blending in bad or copied views just adds noise. The fix is to gather views that are truly separate and well-informed, not an echo of the same source.
A dragonfly's eye has thousands of tiny lenses feeding one picture. A good forecaster does the same with opinions. Collect several separate, clashing views, the bulls and the bears, the insiders and the outsiders, and blend them. The average of many honest guesses usually beats any single one. It is the wisdom of the crowd working inside one head.
A worked example
Facing a decision, Haridya deliberately reads the optimist, the pessimist, and the doubter, then forms one blended view. It lands closer to the truth than any one of the three alone. [illustrative]
How to spot it
- ·several clashing views gathered
- ·separate sources, not echoes of each other
- ·one blended judgement, not one voice
Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner · Superforecasting