Should “Systems Thinkers” Accept the Limits on Political Forecasting or Push the Limits?

Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 24 (3):375-391 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Historical analysis and policy making often require counterfactual thought experiments that isolate hypothesized causes from a vast array of historical possibilities. However, a core precept of Jervis's “systems thinking” is that causes are so interconnected that the historian can only with great difficulty imagine causation by subtracting all variables but one. Prediction, according to Jervis, is even more problematic: The more sensitive an event is to initial conditions (e.g., butterfly effects), the harder it is to derive accurate forecasts. Nevertheless, if awareness of system effects can help forecasters better calibrate their probability estimates of whether or not certain events will come to pass, systems thinkers who are pessimistic about prediction are diluting their confidence too much. The challenge is a meta-cognitive one: thinking systematically about when to engage in systems thinking; and weighing the costs and benefits of using simple or complex heuristics in policy environments that can shift suddenly from quiescence to turbulence.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Limits of thought and Husserl's phenomenology.Brian Redekopp - 2011 - Dissertation, Mcgill University
Is science nearing its limits?George Steiner & Emílio Rui Vilar (eds.) - 2008 - [Lisbon]: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
On the Limits of Law at Century’s End.Olúfémi Táíwò - 2001 - The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 11:69-80.
The limits of language.Stephen David Ross - 1994 - New York: Fordham University Press.
Quine's 'limits of decision'.William C. Purdy - 1999 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 64 (4):1439-1466.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-10-30

Downloads
33 (#419,244)

6 months
8 (#158,054)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

System effects and the problem of prediction.Jeffrey Friedman - 2012 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 24 (3):291-312.
System Effects Revisited.Robert Jervis - 2012 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 24 (3):393-415.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Thinking, Fast and Slow.Daniel Kahneman - 2011 - New York: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
.Daniel Kahneman & Shane Frederick - 2002 - Cambridge University Press.
The Structure of scientific theories.Frederick Suppe (ed.) - 1974 - Urbana,: University of Illinois Press.

View all 9 references / Add more references