What it’s about
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction is a book by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner released in 2015. It details findings from The Good Judgment Project which is a twenty year project in which the aim was to discover just how good forecasters were at forecasting.
Why you should read it
Every decision we make we make using a judgement of just how that decision will benefit us in the future, that is to say we all attempt to predict the future and our attempts at doing so help us to make the decisions that we make.
That means that when we make a decision to for example marry a person, we are basing that decision on our prediction of the future benefits of marrying that person; when we decide to buy a new car, we are basing that decision to buy that car on our prediction of the future benefits of buying that car.
This is why it is so important that we become really good forecasters, but every person knows the vast majority of us are not very good at predicting the future. And that’s what the study conducted by Philip E. Tetlock shows, because it shows that all the expert forecasters of the world actually perform only slightly better than a monkey does when making random guesses at what the future may bring.
But that was not all it showed, what it also showed was a rather staggering truth that there are people that are very good at forecasting the future. And these people were not experts, but ordinary people, from former ballroom dancers to retired computer programmers, these ordinary people we found to have an extraordinary ability to predict the future with a degree of accuracy 60% greater than average.
Tetlock called these people superforecasters. And what is amazing is that he shows us through means of offering practical advice on how to utilise the techniques used by these superforecasters, that any one of us has the power should we choose to to become a superforecaster. This means this book is a book that will help readers should they choose to to become much better at forecasting and thus become much better at making decisions.
Meaning for any person who wants to become better at making decisions, whether that be decisions about who to date, who to marry, career decisions, how to spend money, how to make money, where to invest money and much more. This is the book that you must read because this is the book that will teach you better than any other just what it is you need to do to start making better decisions. And that is, become a superforecaster, which this book will teach you how to become.
And that’s why this book is a must read.
The Knowledge of Freedom 