We all want to know what the future will hold. And we all are futurists. We teed up this question on this site in 2015 and it’s worth looking at again as we begin 2016.
As the late Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” In the event Yogi isn’t the person you turn to for philosophical insights, here is what Walter Frick had to say in the Harvard Business Review about the art and science of looking at the future. He talked about the new book by Phillip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforcasting: The Art and Science of Prediction.
Forecasting is difficult. Still, accurate predictions are essential to good decision making in every realm of life. We are all forecasters. When we think about changing jobs, getting married, buying a home, making an investment, launching a product, or retiring, we decide based on how we expect the future to unfold.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but in The New York Times Book Review, Leonard Mlodinow reviewed both Richard Nisbett’s Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking and Superforcasting: The Art and Science of Prediction and found the arguments made by Nisbett (who Malcom Gladwell called “the most influential thinker in my life) lacking, while those made by Tetlock and Gardner compelling.
Stay tuned to this website as we’ll continue to look to the future – especially from a national security perspective. We’ll look at a broad range of sources, but especially what the United States Intelligence Community (the “IC”) and Silicon Valley are telling us.
