Carissa Véliz

So even, for example, predictions by economists with good intentions can shape the future dramatically.

And therefore, we should be much more careful and we need a public debate about what are the rules of who gets to make these predictions and when maybe we shouldn't predict something, even if we could.

Exactly.

So if I predict that interest rates are going up, people will try to get loans quicker because they want to make sure that they get it on a low price.

But that in itself increases demand, which makes the interest go up.

And so it has this reflexivity that we're, I think, not mindful enough of how it can be detrimental to democracy.

Yes, it can be.

But one of the insights of studying the history of prediction is there are many ways of making a prediction accurate.

So one way is drinking yourself to death, of course.

But another way is stressing someone out so much that their health will deteriorate.

And so we have to be very careful.

to protect people from those kind of pernicious influences.

That's exactly right.

And we also need to be very careful about data because we have an ideology right now that the more data, the better.

And if the decision is made on the basis of data, there are no values.

But that's not true.

There's no such thing as data-driven.

Every decision is driven by values.

And sometimes even decisions that are based on data are wrong because we will never have the data that we would need to make a good decision.

So, for example, climate change.