Ditch the Crystal Ball and Become a "Superforecaster"

In 2005, Philip Tetlock did a study, "Expert Political Judgment," where he basically asked, "Hey, what if we tested whether all these Very Important Experts™ were any good at predicting the future?"

Surprise: They weren't.

He collected more than 28,000 forecasts made by 284 political analysts, economists, foreign policy bigwigs and all the usual loud-talking necktie people. What Tetlock found (and I'm condensing 20 years of depressing data here) is that the average talking head was terrible at predicting real-world outcomes.

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from Barking Up the Wrong Tree.