Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

By: Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner

This book will help you upgrade your thinking process.

This book will help you upgrade your thinking process.

If you want to become better at forecasting and be able to “predict the future”, this is THE BOOK that you must read. Yet, that is not the only valuable insight that you will get from this book. The main element that the book will accomplish is to help you upgrade your thinking and decision-making processes.

Flow: 5/5, it reads like fiction (disclaimer: I do like math and statistics)

Actionability: 5/5, it will give you a clear process to follow

Mindset: 5/5, this book will change the way you think about the world

Some Of My Highlights:

  • “The one undeniable talent that talking heads have is their skills ta telling a compelling story with conviction, and that is enough.”

  • “How predictable something is depends on what we are trying to predict, how far into the future, and under what circumstances.”

  • “The consumers of forecasting – governments, business, and the public – don’t demand evidence of accuracy.”

  • “Foresight isn’t a mysterious gift bestowed at birth. It is the product of particular ways of thinking, of gathering information, of updating beliefs.”

  • “Human thought is beset by psychological pitfalls, a fact that has only become widely recognized in the last decade or two.”

  • “We all have been to quickly to make up our minds and too slow to change them.”

  • “A defining feature of intuitive judgment is its insensitivity to the quality of the evidence on which the judgment is based.”

  • “They talked about possibilities and probabilities, not certainties. And while no one liked to say ‘I was wrong,’, these experts more readily admitted it and changed their minds.”

  • “The simplicity and confidence of the hedgehog impairs foresight, but it calms nerves – which is good for the careers of hedgehogs.”

  • “Stepping outside ourselves and really getting a different view of reality is a struggle.”