Sep 19, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min · 12 segments
On this episode of Weekend Conversations on the Elevate Podcast, host Robert Glazer joins David Burkus, organizational psychologist, Columbia University professor, and bestselling author of five books…
David BurkusGuest
Robert GlazerHost
So the premise here, and you know what? I had this in the back of my head for a while, and I finally got around to it.
But it's kind of, it isn't talked about, but this is a pretty interesting thing.
So in November 2023, 108 economists signed this open letter in The Guardian warning that Javier Millet would mean devastation for Argentina if he got elected.
And clearly they all emailed each other and got together kind of front cover takeover.
Look, and a lot of people who debated me when I wrote this, like we're pointing that like Argentina is like not in great shape.
Well, of course they're not like, like, it's not like you snap out of where they were into being like, but two and a half years in inflation is the lowest in a decade the country has actually run consecutive physical surpluses poverty is down um and and like basically they were just wrong like dead wrong um but not a not a single one of 108 has published anything or talked about what they got wrong or hey here's what i learned um from what i thought about the policies so like what do you make of that
yeah well i mean first of all it doesn't surprise me i think every time i see an open letter i just assume that it's wrong right i mean i not to get overtly political we had that we had 108 economists on that thing we had what was it like 50 different security people that said the hunter biden laptop was russian disinformation now it turned out that he really did just leave it at a computer repair store right yeah every time i see one of these open letters i assume like they're probably wrong um and i think there's two things going on in this one right the first is that We like experts way more than they deserve, right? Like there's a, there's a study from 2005.
The guy named Philip Tetlock did, I don't remember if it was a book or a published paper, but essentially what he did was he looked at all of these different expert predictions in a variety of fields, economics, but also geopolitics and all this sort of stuff.
And then he compared them against what he called like continuation of the norm.
In other words, like how often when an expert predicted something that was like different versus just not more of the same, we're just going to have more of the same, right? How often did the expert get it right? And it was like coin flip chance compared to just continuation of the norm.
And so ever since that came out in like 2005, I probably got around to reading it, you know, cause I'm dense in like 2011, 2012.
And I've always thought about it since then that like, we probably overvalue expert.
What was the old Yogi Berra quote that like predictions are difficult, especially about the future, right?
Well, fooled by randomness, Nassim Tlaib's book, which is, he's just brilliant.
He would talk about, he'd go to these conferences and some economists would be up there and he'd be like, excuse me, He's making his predictions.
Can you tell me what your predictions were for the last five years and how correct they were? And it seems like these, I say guys, but men and women, they're pretty loud when they get it right.
Which is, you know, that's I would probably if I were if I made a very loud, bold prediction and then got it wrong, I'd probably be pretty quiet about that one, too.
So the premise here, and you know what? I had this in the back of my head for a while, and I finally got around to it.
But it's kind of, it isn't talked about, but this is a pretty interesting thing.
So in November 2023, 108 economists signed this open letter in The Guardian warning that Javier Millet would mean devastation for Argentina if he got elected.
And clearly they all emailed each other and got together kind of front cover takeover.
Look, and a lot of people who debated me when I wrote this, like we're pointing that like Argentina is like not in great shape.
Well, of course they're not like, like, it's not like you snap out of where they were into being like, but two and a half years in inflation is the lowest in a decade the country has actually run consecutive physical surpluses poverty is down um and and like basically they were just wrong like dead wrong um but not a not a single one of 108 has published anything or talked about what they got wrong or hey here's what i learned um from what i thought about the policies so like what do you make of that
yeah well i mean first of all it doesn't surprise me i think every time i see an open letter i just assume that it's wrong right i mean i not to get overtly political we had that we had 108 economists on that thing we had what was it like 50 different security people that said the hunter biden laptop was russian disinformation now it turned out that he really did just leave it at a computer repair store right yeah every time i see one of these open letters i assume like they're probably wrong um and i think there's two things going on in this one right the first is that We like experts way more than they deserve, right? Like there's a, there's a study from 2005.
The guy named Philip Tetlock did, I don't remember if it was a book or a published paper, but essentially what he did was he looked at all of these different expert predictions in a variety of fields, economics, but also geopolitics and all this sort of stuff.
And then he compared them against what he called like continuation of the norm.
In other words, like how often when an expert predicted something that was like different versus just not more of the same, we're just going to have more of the same, right? How often did the expert get it right? And it was like coin flip chance compared to just continuation of the norm.
And so ever since that came out in like 2005, I probably got around to reading it, you know, cause I'm dense in like 2011, 2012.
And I've always thought about it since then that like, we probably overvalue expert.
What was the old Yogi Berra quote that like predictions are difficult, especially about the future, right?
Well, fooled by randomness, Nassim Tlaib's book, which is, he's just brilliant.
He would talk about, he'd go to these conferences and some economists would be up there and he'd be like, excuse me, He's making his predictions.
Can you tell me what your predictions were for the last five years and how correct they were? And it seems like these, I say guys, but men and women, they're pretty loud when they get it right.
Which is, you know, that's I would probably if I were if I made a very loud, bold prediction and then got it wrong, I'd probably be pretty quiet about that one, too.
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