How to Stop Worrying and Love the Unpredictable

Future Babble

Bestselling author of Risk, Dan Gardner returns with a fascinating and accessible book exploring the psychology of our obsession with the future

Future Babble is genuinely arresting ... required reading for journalists, politicians, academics and anyone who listens to them.

A rare mix of superb scholarship and zesty prose.

Philip Tetlock, author of Expert Political Judgement and Mitchell Professor of Organizational Behavior, Hass School of Business, University of California

It is a tour de force, absolutely outstanding

This book should be required reading for America's intelligence agencies

Gardner leaves plenty of prognosticators squirming on history's thumbtack.

Dan Gardner is the bestselling author of Risk as well as a columnist and senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen. Trained in history and law, Gardner worked in politics as a senior policy adviser before turning to journalism. His writing has received numerous awards, including the National Newspaper Award and Amnesty International's Media Award. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel, experts said it would soon hit $200; a few months later it plunged to $30. In 1908, it was pronounced that there would be no more wars in Europe; we all know how that turned out. Face it, experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet every day we ask them to predict the future – everythng from the weather to the likelihood of a terrorist attack. Future Babble is the first book to examine this phenomenon, showing why our brains yearn for certainty about the future, why we are attracted to those who predict it confidently, and why it's so easy for us to ignore the trail of outrageously wrong forecasts. 
 
In this fast-paced, example-packed, sometimes darkly hilarious book, Dan Gardner shows how seminal research by professor Philip Tetlock proved that the more famous a pundit is, the more likely they are to be right about as often as a stopped watch. Gardner also draws on current research in cognitive psychology, political science, and behavioral economics to discover something quite reassuring: The future is always uncertain, but the end is not always near.

The Science and Politics of Fear

Risk

'COMPELLING ... AN INVALUABLE RESOURCE FOR ANYONE WHO ASPIRES TO THINK CLEARLY' - GUARDIAN

Excellent ... Gardner analyses everything from the media's predilection for irrational scare stories to the cynical use of fear by politicians pushing a particular agenda ... A cheery corrective to modern paranoia

Terrific ... exceptionally good - has the clarity of Malcolm Gladwell

Enlivening ... a fascinating insight into the peculiar and devastating nature of human fear

Stimulating ... where writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Francis Wheen have been content largely to enumerate the errors of less rational men and women, Dan Gardner has collated part of what we need to diagnose the problem

Compelling ... Gardner aims to get us thinking more carefully about how we run our lives - and make it harder for politicians, the media and advertisers to lead us astray

A fascinating insight into the peculiar and devastating nature of human fear

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational

A terrific book, full of wonderful insights, and offering cutting-edge social science in a reader-friendly package. The life you save may be your own!

Cass Sunstein, Director of Harvard University's Program on Risk Regulation, and co-author of the best-selling 'Nudge'

Dan Gardner is a columnist and senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen. Trained in history and law, Gardner worked in politics as a senior policy adviser before turning to journalism. His writing has received numerous awards, including the National Newspaper Award and Amnesty International's Media Award. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

We are the safest humans who ever lived - the statistics prove it. And yet the media tells a different story with its warnings and scare stories. How is it possible that anxiety has become the stuff of daily life? 
 
In this ground-breaking, compulsively readable book, Dan Gardner shows how our flawed strategies for perceiving risk influence our lives, often with unforeseen and sometimes-tragic consequences. He throws light on our paranoia about everything from paedophiles to terrorism and reveals how the most significant threats are actually the mundane risks to which we pay little attention. 
 
Speaking to psychologists and scientists, as well as looking at the influence of the media and politicians, Gardner uncovers one of the central puzzles of our time: why are the safest people in history living in a culture of fear?

Philip Tetlock

Dan Gardner

The techniques and habits of mind set out in this book are a gift to anyone who has to think about what the future might bring. In other words, to everyone.

A terrific piece of work that deserves to be widely read . . . Highly recommended.

This marvelous book tells an exciting story of ordinary people beating experts in a very serious game. It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world.  Read it.

Full of excellent advice – it is the best thing I have read on predictions . . . Superforecasting is an indispensable guide to this indispensable activity.

Philip Tetlock has transformed the science of prediction.

The most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Superforecasting is a fascinating book.

Superforecasting is a very good book. In fact it is essential reading.

The best way to know if an idea is right is to see if it predicts the future. But which ideas, which methods, which people have a track record of non-obvious predictions vindicated by the course of events? The answers will surprise you, and they have radical implications for politics, policy, journalism, education, and even epistemology – how we can best gain knowledge about the world. The casual style of Superforecasting belies the profundity of its message.

Superforecasting is a rare book that will make you smarter and wiser. One of the giants of behavioral science reveals how to improve at predicting the future.

The material in Superforecasting is new, and includes a compendium of best practices for prediction . . . [It offers] us all an opportunity to understand and react more intelligently to the confusing world around us.

Tetlock's 'Ten Commandments For Aspiring Superforecasters' should probably have a place of honor in most business meeting rooms.

There isn't a social scientist in the world I admire more than Phil Tetlock.

Superforecasting is the most important scientific study I’ve ever read on prediction.

A fascinating study of what it is that makes some forecasters consistently better than others.

Tetlock's work is fascinating and important, and he and Gardner have written it up with verve. - Financial Times

Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, is one of the most interesting business and finance books published in 2015.

The lessons of superforecasting are keenly relevant to huge swathes of our lives.

Tetlock writes boldly about wanting to improve what he sees as the bloated, expensive – and not terribly accurate – intelligence apparatus that advises our politicians and drives global affairs.

Philip Tetlock’s Superforecasting is a common-sense guide to thinking about decision-making and the future by a man who knows this terrain like no one else.

Tetlock and Gardner believe anyone can improve their forecasting ability by learning from the way they work. If that's true, people in business and finance who make an effort to do so have a lot to gain – and those who don't, much to lose.

What I found most interesting was the continuous process of integrating new information to test and modify existing beliefs … clearly a beneficial skill in financial markets

Social science has enormous potential, especially when it combines 'rigorous empiricism with a resistance to absolute answers.' The work of Philip Tetlock possesses these qualities.

Offers a valuable insight into the future of management.

Both rigorous and readable. The lessons are directly relevant to business, finance, government, and politics.

A scientific analysis of the ancient art of divination which shows that forecasting is a talent.

Captivating . . . [Tetlock's] writing is so engaging and his argument so tantalizing, readers will quickly be drawn into the challenge . . . A must-read field guide for the intellectually curious.

A top choice [for best book of 2015] among the world’s biggest names in finance and economics . . . Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer, Deutsche Bank Chief U.S. Economist Joe LaVorgna, and Citigroup Vice Chairman Peter Orszag were among those giving it a thumbs-up.

Just as modern medicine began when a farsighted few began to collect data and keep track of outcomes, to trust objective 'scoring' over their own intuitions, it's time now for similar demands to be made of the experts who lead public opinion. It's time for evidence-based forecasting.

Tetlock and his colleagues [have] found that there is such a thing as foresight, and it’s not a gift that’s bestowed upon special people, but is a skill that can be learned and developed . . . To obtain this apparent superpower does not take a PhD or an exceptionally high IQ; it takes a certain mindset.

Superforecasting is a very good book. In fact it is essential reading - which I have never said in any of my previous Management Today reviews . . . It should be on every manager's and investor's reading list around the topics du jour of decision-making, prediction and behavioural economics.

Read Philip Tetlock’s Superforecasting, instead of political pundits who don’t what they’re talking about.

We should indeed apply superforecasting more systematically to government. Like systematic opinion polling, it is an aid to decision-makers and informed debate. It is ideologically neutral, unless you have a bias in favour of ignorance. This is all good.

The Art and Science of Prediction

The international bestseller 
 
'A manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.' Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow 
_________________________ 
What if we could improve our ability to predict the future? 
 
Everything we do involves forecasts about how the future will unfold. Whether buying a new house or changing job, designing a new product or getting married, our decisions are governed by implicit predictions of how things are likely to turn out. The problem is, we're not very good at it. 
 
In a landmark, twenty-year study, Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed that the average expert was only slightly better at predicting the future than a layperson using random guesswork. Tetlock's latest project – an unprecedented, government-funded forecasting tournament involving over a million individual predictions – has since shown that there are, however, some people with real, demonstrable foresight. These are ordinary people, from former ballroom dancers to retired computer programmers, who have an extraordinary ability to predict the future with a degree of accuracy 60% greater than average. They are superforecasters. 
 
In Superforecasting, Tetlock and his co-author Dan Gardner offer a fascinating insight into what we can learn from this elite group. They show the methods used by these superforecasters which enable them to outperform even professional intelligence analysts with access to classified data. And they offer practical advice on how we can all use these methods for our own benefit – whether in business, in international affairs, or in everyday life. 
_________________________ 
'The techniques and habits of mind set out in this book are a gift to anyone who has to think about what the future might bring. In other words, to everyone.' Economist 
 
'A terrific piece of work that deserves to be widely read . . . Highly recommended.' Independent 
 
'The best thing I have read on predictions . . . Superforecasting is an indispensable guide to this indispensable activity.' The Times

Dan Gardner

Praise for Superforecasting

The techniques and habits of mind set out in this book are a gift to anyone who has to think about what the future might bring. In other words, to everyone.

A terrific piece of work that deserves to be widely read . . . Highly recommended.

This marvelous book tells an exciting story of ordinary people beating experts in a very serious game. It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.

The techniques and habits of mind set out in this book are a gift to anyone who has to think about what the future might bring. In other words, to everyone.

A terrific piece of work that deserves to be widely read . . . Highly recommended.

This marvelous book tells an exciting story of ordinary people beating experts in a very serious game. It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.

The techniques and habits of mind set out in this book are a gift to anyone who has to think about what the future might bring. In other words, to everyone.

A terrific piece of work that deserves to be widely read . . . Highly recommended.

This marvelous book tells an exciting story of ordinary people beating experts in a very serious game. It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.

Books by Dan Gardner

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