Simple noise-free rules predict better than experts, but only slightly, because most outcomes are largely unpredictable from what anyone knows at decision time; better aggregation cannot remove that ceiling.

Evidence 4 passages

• groundsSource document

  In predictive judgments, human experts are easily outperformed by simple formulas, models of reality, models of a judge, or even randomly generated models.

• groundsSource document

  But even the simplest rules and algorithms have big advantages over human judges. They are free of noise and they do not attempt to apply complex, usually invalid insights about the predictors.

• groundsSource document

  Models do better than people, but not by much. Mostly, we find mediocre human judgments and slightly better models.

• groundsSource document

  As long as algorithms are not nearly perfect, and in many domains objective ignorance dictates that they will never be, human judgment will not be replaced. That is why it must be improved.

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