The Signal and the Noise

Information Explosions

Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 sparked the first massive expansion of access to knowledge, changing the availability of information. Before Gutenberg, scribes copied books by hand; each volume cost about $20,000 in today’s prices. Copying books was so expensive it was hard to keep books in existence, let alone expand access to them.

After the advent of the printing press, books dropped to about $70 each and became “exponentially” more common. As with the first days of the Internet, these early books varied in quality. As in the web’s early days, access to information grew faster than people’s ability to make sense of it and sort good information from “mistruths.” Consequently, people became more sectarian: They clung to positions they agreed with and ignored the rest. This ensures only ignorance. Instead, try to consider an issue thoroughly and learn to sort “signal” from “noise.”

Good Predictions

In 1987, Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania started studying whether academic experts predict events with any more accuracy than political scientists. Tetlock found one “subgroup of experts” ...