[marginalium]
On the accuracy of futurist predictions (usually not very accurate)
4 Nov 2022
On the accuracy of futurist predictions (usually not very accurate).
In particular, people who were into “big ideas” … generally fared poorly, whether or not their favored big ideas were correct .. Another common trait of poor predictors is lack of anything resembling serious evaluation of past predictive errors … By contrast, people who had (relatively) accurate predictions had a deep understanding of the problem and also tended to have a record of learning lessons from past predictive errors.
Perhaps unsurprising. But the detail of the analysis provides very interesting insight into what kinds of things are predictable.
Anthologies: Betterment, Wealth Architecture, Psychologia, Cognitive Karstica, Successful Prophets, On Being Fruitful, On Thinking and Reasoning