By Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner
Mastering the art of accurate prediction
Subject
Themes
Forecasting shapes decisions from home purchases to military strategy, yet most expert predictions perform no better than random guessing. Research tracking 284 experts across twenty-one years revealed average forecasting accuracy barely exceeding chance. Within this average, however, two distinct groups emerged. Hedgehogs organised thinking around One Big Idea, forcing complex problems into preferred frameworks. Foxes drew on multiple analytical tools, gathering diverse information whilst admitting uncertainty. Foxes consistently outperformed hedgehogs, demonstrating that thinking style matters more than credentials or knowledge.
Forecasting shapes decisions from home purchases to military strategy, yet most expert predictions perform no better than random guessing. Research tracking 284 experts across twenty-one years revealed average forecasting accuracy barely exceeding chance. Within this average, however, two distinct…
Superforecasting emerged from decades of research demonstrating that expert predictions frequently fail. Philip Tetlock's landmark twenty-one-year study tracking 284 experts making 28,000 predictions revealed the average expert performed no better than random guessing. This finding challenged…
The intelligence community's resistance to numerical probabilities reveals how vagueness protects reputation whilst undermining accountability. Sherman Kent's 1951 estimate calling a Soviet attack on Yugoslavia 'a serious possibility' meant 65 to 35 odds to him, but colleagues interpreted it as 80…
Police officers spend years judging whether suspects tell the truth, yet research shows they grow confident faster than accurate. This paradox reveals that practice alone doesn't improve skill when feedback arrives too slowly or ambiguously. After interrogating thousands of suspects, officers…
Devyn Duffy made 2,271 forecasts across 140 questions in one season, averaging over sixteen forecasts per question. When President Obama announced airstrikes against ISIL in Syria on September 10, 2014, forecasters immediately updated towards near certainty. Superforecasters update far more…
The Bay of Pigs invasion demonstrates how cohesive teams can fail catastrophically. Kennedy's advisers assumed maintaining deniability would suffice despite *New York Times* exposure of CIA training Cuban exiles. When fourteen hundred guerrillas landed, twenty thousand Cuban soldiers surrounded them…
Leaders require confidence, decisiveness, and vision, yet superforecasters embrace uncertainty, slow analysis, and constant adjustment. This apparent contradiction threatens to paralyse decision-makers: if nothing is certain, how can one act? The tension resolves through domain separation.…
Bill Flack spends his retirement in Kearney, Nebraska, making predictions about global events that nobody asks for. He answers questions like whether Russia will annex Ukrainian territory or North Korea will detonate nuclear devices. Unlike celebrity pundits whose track records remain unmeasured,…
Steve Ballmer's 2007 dismissal of the iPhone appears spectacularly wrong at first glance. He declared 'There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.' Yet parsing his words reveals crucial ambiguity. What counts as significant? Which market (smartphones…
Sandy Sillman, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2008, faced declining health that forced him toward early retirement from atmospheric science. With degrees from Brown, MIT, and Harvard, plus fluency in five languages, Sandy possessed formidable intelligence. When he joined the Good Judgment…
Devyn Duffy, an unemployed factory worker who became a state caseworker, updates his forecasts obsessively using Google alerts for relevant topics like Syrian refugees or Thai coups. He made 2,271 forecasts across 140 questions in one season alone, averaging over sixteen forecasts per question.…
On January 10, 1961, the *New York Times* exposed the CIA's secret training of Cuban exiles in Guatemala for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy's advisers assumed that maintaining deniability about US involvement would suffice despite the exposure. When fourteen hundred guerrillas landed at the Bay of…
Daniel Kahneman asked whether superforecasters constitute different kinds of people or people who do different things. Tetlock answered both, noting they score higher on intelligence and open-mindedness but what distinguishes them is sustained hard work maintaining System 2 vigilance against System…
By Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner
Subject
Themes
Forecasting shapes decisions from home purchases to military strategy, yet most expert predictions perform no better than random guessing. Research tracking 284 experts across twenty-one years revealed average forecasting accuracy barely exceeding chance. Within this average, however, two distinct groups emerged. Hedgehogs organised thinking around One Big Idea, forcing complex problems into preferred frameworks. Foxes drew on multiple analytical tools, gathering diverse information whilst admitting uncertainty. Foxes consistently outperformed hedgehogs, demonstrating that thinking style matters more than credentials or knowledge.