Philip E. Tetlock

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST “ The most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow . ” —Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week’s meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts’ predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight, and Tetlock has spent the past decade trying to figure out why. What makes some people so good? And can this talent be taught? In Superforecasting , Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people—including a Brooklyn filmmaker, a retired pipe installer, and a former ballroom dancer—who set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. They’ve beaten other benchmarks, competitors, and prediction markets. They’ve even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information. They are "superforecasters." In this groundbreaking and accessible book, Tetlock and Gardner show us how we can learn from this elite group. Weaving together stories of forecasting successes (the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound) and failures (the Bay of Pigs) and interviews with a range of high-level decision makers, from David Petraeus to Robert Rubin, they show that good forecasting doesn’t require powerful computers or arcane methods. It involves gathering evidence from a variety of sources, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course.Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future—whether in business, finance, politics, international affairs, or daily life—and is destined to become a modern classic.

The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat.Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.

" Les techniques et les façons de penser exposées dans ce livre sont précieuses pour quiconque s'intéresse à ce que l'avenir nous réserve. En d'autres termes, pour tout le monde. " The EconomistTout le monde aimerait connaître l'avenir pour prendre les bonnes décisions politiques, économiques, ou pour lancer un nouveau produit.Malheureusement, nous avons tendance à être de piètres prévisionnistes. Dans une célèbre étude, qui a duré près de vingt ans, le professeur Philip Tetlock a montré que les prédictions des plus grands experts étaient la plupart du temps aléatoires, voire totalement erronées : qui a su anticiper la récente pandémie, le Brexit ou l'élection de Trump ?Il est pourtant possible de prévoir le futur, mais cela suppose une absolue rigueur, une ouverture d'esprit et une méthode que peu d'experts possèdent. C'est à ce projet fou que Philip Tetlock s'est attelé, sollicitant des dizaines de milliers de gens ordinaires qui se sont mis à prédire des événements mondiaux. Ce tournoi de prévision a été financé par le gouvernement et a permis à des non-experts particulièrement doués – comme un cinéaste de Brooklyn ou un plombier à la retraite – de battre des analystes des services secrets.On nomme ce groupe d'élite des " superprévisionnistes ". Ce livre vous raconte leur étonnante aventure et vous montre comment vous pouvez vous-même apprendre à prédire l'avenir.