Spock’s Predictions Were Wrong 83% Of The Time

In their recent episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast, Brewster, Taylor, and Carlisle discussed Spock’s Predictions Were Wrong 83% Of The Time. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

Jake: The first thing that was really funny in the book [The Scout Mindset], she went through and looked at that. There were 23 different instances where Spock, who’s supposed to be this hyper rational-

Tobias: [laughs]

Jake: -cold, calculating Vulcan, where he made specific predictions, and then assign basically probabilities and confidence intervals to things as he was talking about it. I think she had 23 different instances that she measured and all the different iterations of Spock over the years. When Spock said something that was absolutely impossible, it happened 83% of the time.

Tobias: [laughs]

Jake: When he said, it was very unlikely, it was a coin flip. When he said, it was just regular unlikely, it was also a coin flip. When he said something was likely, it was 80%. So, that’s actually not bad. When he assigned a 99.5% chance of something that happened, it happened 17% of the time.

Tobias: [laughs]

Jake: It turns out that Spock was horribly calibrated when it comes to his predictions versus reality. His Brier score would be total shit, if you actually went through and calculated it. If you put him in charge of running a municipal bond portfolio, managing the best casino online, or underwriting catastrophe insurance, he’d go bankrupt before the end of the season. He’s not very accurate. That was funny.

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