Future babble : why expert predictions are next to worthless, and you can do better

by Dan Gardner

Paper Book, 2011

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

New York : Dutton, 2011.

Description

In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel,nbsp;experts said it would soon hit $200;nbsp;a few months later it plunged tonbsp;$30. In 1967, they said the USSR would have one of the fastest-growing economies in the year 2000; in 2000, the USSR did not exist. In 1911, it was pronounced that there would be no more wars in Europe; we all know how that turned out. Face it, experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet every day we ask them to predict the future -- everything from the weather to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack. Future Babble is the first book to examine this phenomenon, showing why our brains yearn for certainty about the future, why we are attracted to those who predict it confidently, and why it's so easy for us to ignore the trail of outrageously wrong forecasts. In this fast-paced, example-packed, sometimes darkly hilarious book, journalist Dan Gardner shows how seminal research by UC Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock proved that pundits who are more famous are less accurate -- and the average expert is no more accurate than a flipped coin.nbsp;Gardner also draws on current research in cognitive psychology, political science, and behavioral economics to discover something quite reassuring: The future is always uncertain, but the end is not always near.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member mmyoung

There is nothing surprising in this book for those who are well read in the areas of cognitive bias or who have extensive training in probability however it is a well written and well rounded summation of the value of social prediction from the point of view of those familiar with those fields.

The

crux of Gardner's argument is that "hedgehogs" (those with one big idea) are less accurate in making predictions than are "foxes" ( those who drew information from a variety of sources and then synthesized it.) Gardner also discusses the many studies that indicate that audiences are more convinced by stories and confidence than they are by statistics and accuracy.The three key aspects of a "fox" way of thinking are; aggregation, metacognition and humility.

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LibraryThing member g026r

If you've done even a brief reading in the realm of popular publications on the subjects of memory, cognitive psychology, &c., then there's nothing particularly new and revelatory here. (Though this may be my bias showing, as I had previously encountered a number of the works and authors cited

prior to coming to this one.)

What Gardner has done, however, is to gather all these different pieces and theories into one place, updating some of their examples to reflect the more prevalent concerns of contemporary pundits and experts. Regardless of your familiarity with the underlying theories, it's well worth the read for those sections alone.

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LibraryThing member lamour

It is going to be difficult to read another prediction without thinking of this book. Gardner pokes holes in the prognostications of many famous analysts and talking heads. Dividing these thinkers into foxes and hedgehogs, he explains why we continually buy into what they tell us is coming

tomorrow, next week or during the next century when most of their past predictions have turned to be wrong. Foxes continually questions their research and are often correct when they look ahead. Hedgehogs come to an issue with an idea of what the answer is and then look for the data that supports that view. Any data that fails to do that is discarded or explained away. This is why many economists and business analysts did not see the real estate bust coming and the following failure of the financial sector. There is much history here as well including predictions about the start of WW I and WW II and how those proved incorrect.

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LibraryThing member MartinBodek

This book = The Black Swan x Freakonomics steroids. I loved the argument set forth in the book and the examples used to prove them, as I make this argument all the time: you can't predict anything, why don't you just quit it?

LibraryThing member mrgan

A level-headed argument that most far-reaching predictions about the future of human affairs are baloney—especially when they're delivered by recognized experts on the subject. Could've used a wider range of topics to pick examples from, but it works.

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