Superforecasting

Superforecasting tells the story of psychologist Philip Tetlock’s project to systematically evaluate the predictions of experts. What exactly does an advisor mean when they tell the President that a military operation has a “good chance” of being successful? It wasn’t so long ago that no one thought to even ask such a question, and as Tetlock shows, the consequences couldn’t be more real. Tetlock’s work led to the development of the Good Judgement project, a forecasting competition designed to identify the characteristics of “superforecasters”, individuals with a quantifiable talent for predicting how world events will unfold. It’s a great book, and one I was partly inspired to read because of my involvement in a student forecasting tournament based on the Good Judgement project (where our students took first and second place overall!)