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    Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
    Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
    Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
    Audiobook11 hours

    Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway

    Written by Dan Gardner

    Narrated by Walter Dixon

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In Future Babble, award-winning journalist Dan Gardner presents landmark research debunking the whole expert prediction industry and explores our obsession with the future.

    In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel, experts said it would soon hit $200; it then plunged to $30. In 1967, they said the USSR would be the world's fastest-growing economy by 2000; by 2000, the USSR no longer existed. In 1911, it was pronounced that there would be no more wars in Europe-we all know how that turned out. The truth is that experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet, every day we ask them to predict the future-everything from the weather to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack.

    Here 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. How good you are at predicting the future doesn't depend on your education or experience. It depends on how you think: like a fox or like a hedgehog. Foxes know a little about a lot of things. They have doubts. They often sound wishy-washy. And you don't see them on television much. On the other hand, hedgehogs know a lot about one thing. They are absolutely certain. They are confident. Almost every popular expert you can think of is a hedgehog. And they are experts at explaining away predictions they made that turned out to be wrong.

    For real insight into what is coming next, you need to consult foxes and think like one, too. Future Babble explains in detail what that means, and how you can tell foxes and hedgehogs apart. In this example-packed, sometimes darkly hilarious audio book, journalist Dan Gardner shows how seminal research by UC Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock proved that the more famous a pundit is, the more likely he is to be right about as often as a stopped watch. Gardner also draws on current research in cognitive psychology, political science, and behavioral economics in delivering this reassuring message: The future is always uncertain, but the end is not always near.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateMar 16, 2011
    ISBN9781596597785
    Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
    Author

    Dan Gardner

    Dan Gardner is a journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of Risk, Future Babble and Superforecasting (with Philip E. Tetlock). With Bent Flyvbjerg, he has written How Big Things Get Done.

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    Reviews for Future Babble

    3.5/5

    47 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A level-headed argument that most far-reaching predictions about the future of human affairs are baloney—especially when they're delivered by recognized experts on the subject. Could've used a wider range of topics to pick examples from, but it works.
    • 4/5
      This book = The Black Swan x Freakonomics steroids. I loved the argument set forth in the book and the examples used to prove them, as I make this argument all the time: you can't predict anything, why don't you just quit it?
    • 4/5
      It is going to be difficult to read another prediction without thinking of this book. Gardner pokes holes in the prognostications of many famous analysts and talking heads. Dividing these thinkers into foxes and hedgehogs, he explains why we continually buy into what they tell us is coming tomorrow, next week or during the next century when most of their past predictions have turned to be wrong. Foxes continually questions their research and are often correct when they look ahead. Hedgehogs come to an issue with an idea of what the answer is and then look for the data that supports that view. Any data that fails to do that is discarded or explained away. This is why many economists and business analysts did not see the real estate bust coming and the following failure of the financial sector. There is much history here as well including predictions about the start of WW I and WW II and how those proved incorrect.
    • 4/5
      If you've done even a brief reading in the realm of popular publications on the subjects of memory, cognitive psychology, &c., then there's nothing particularly new and revelatory here. (Though this may be my bias showing, as I had previously encountered a number of the works and authors cited prior to coming to this one.)What Gardner has done, however, is to gather all these different pieces and theories into one place, updating some of their examples to reflect the more prevalent concerns of contemporary pundits and experts. Regardless of your familiarity with the underlying theories, it's well worth the read for those sections alone.
    • 4/5
      There is nothing surprising in this book for those who are well read in the areas of cognitive bias or who have extensive training in probability however it is a well written and well rounded summation of the value of social prediction from the point of view of those familiar with those fields.The crux of Gardner's argument is that "hedgehogs" (those with one big idea) are less accurate in making predictions than are "foxes" ( those who drew information from a variety of sources and then synthesized it.) Gardner also discusses the many studies that indicate that audiences are more convinced by stories and confidence than they are by statistics and accuracy.The three key aspects of a "fox" way of thinking are; aggregation, metacognition and humility.