Future Babble
Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
By: Dan Gardner
Published: October 12, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7710-3519-7
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
"The desire to know the future is universal and constant, as the profusion of soothsaying techniques in human culture - from goats' entrails to tea leaves - demonstrates so well", writes award winning columnist and investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, Dan Gardner, writes in his well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway. The author describes how those trusted experts are often very wrong in their forecasts and predictions, but the general public continues to put great faith in those same experts anyway.
Dan Gardner recognizes that despite being continually and often wildly inaccurate in their forecasts, expert forecasts and predictions never lose their widespread appeal. Dan Gardner sets out to discover why experts fail to forecast the future very well. The author also seeks to explain why people listen to and believe those same failed experts despite their dismal track record. The author points to how the reliance upon experts, and the deep desire to believe them, is a very human foible. People want to know the future, good or bad, and if some expert can remove even a portion of that uncertainty, the expert's forecast will be believed and internalized. The desire to remove uncertainty causes people to act and behave irrationally, but for them, the removal of that sense of uncertainty provides a measure of control. That feeling of control over events is an illusion, for both the expert and the general public, and can result in disappointment or even disaster.
Dan Gardner (photo left) understands the paradox of wanting to understand the future and trust placed in experts, and the constant disappointment and dissatisfaction that results from a failed prediction or forecast. Dan Gardner shows the reader where and why experts go so far wrong in their predictions, and guides the average person to a deeper understanding of how to better prepare for what amounts to an unknowable future. The author draws on the research of University of California professor Philip Tetlock, who demonstrated that the more famous the pundit and expert, the less accurate the predictions made by that person. This unsettling information provides Dan Gardner with his own tests and questions to consider when a person hears a forecast from a well known expert. Armed with this skeptical, yet discerning recommendation, anyone can bypass the excuses, half truths, and rationalizations that help maintain the expert's reputation despite their very wrong predictions.
For me, the power of the book is how Dan Gardner challenges the generally held assumption that experts are more able to forecast the future than the average person. The author combines leading edge research into the nature and accuracy of expert forecasts with humorous examples of pundit predictions gone very awry. Dan Gardner points to the experts' own rationalizations as only part of the reason they continue to enthrall the public. The people listening to the predictions not only want to believe them, but need to believe them, to assuage their own fears of an uncertain future. People don't like uncertainty, and as the author writes, even entirely wrong, and supposed certainty is considered better than no certainty at all.
Dan Gardner achieves what few authors are able to do in their books. He discovers and writes something new, fresh, and enlightening. Dan Gardner demonstrates that a person need not fear the future, or listen to the most optimistic or pessimistic forecasts. Instead, the author invites and challenges his readers to test the expert's ideas with revealing and illuminating questions. Through a combination of research theory and real world results, Dan Gardner lays bare the real truth about the alleged experts. They are often very wrong, and usually no more likely to be able to predict the future than simply tossing a coin. The author teaches his readers how to identify fatal flaws in expert forecasts, and even how to recognize the different types of prognosticators as they weave their outlooks on the future. This book will guide the reader toward removing the fear of uncertainty, while avoiding the blind belief in a supposed expert, who is just as likely to be completely wrong as even remotely accurate.
I highly recommend the the must read and essential book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner, to anyone seeking to discover the real truth behind the so-called experts and their often highly touted forecasts. Dan Gardner shows the reader how difficult forecasting the future really is, and why it's important for the average person to take a more critical view of the word of the supposed experts.
Read the delightful and challenging book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner, and learn why experts are so often wrong, and why it doesn't really matter. The future is isn't that scary that certainty is required. Let the events of the future happen, and ignore the experts. They don't know any more about what will take place than the average person on the street.
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