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Did you know this was going to happen?
Sometimes life gives us the opportunity to boast about uttering the ubiquitous phrase “I told you so!”, And there are those who are convinced that they are really, really good at predicting the future.
But, if we’re honest, in most cases we “knew” that something was only going to happen after this happened: that was one of the possibilities that we considered.
Humans have been trying to predict the future since ancient times.
The Chinese had the I Ching while the Greek oracles preferred to seek answers in the bowels animals.
Today, intelligence agencies around the world rely primarily on expert opinion to predict events.
But there are ordinary people among us who regularly outperform the experts when it comes to making accurate predictions about the future.
They call them “super forecasters” and, in case that sounds quack, there is no deception involved.
“We’re not talking about some sort of psychic fortune teller or anything like that,” said David Robson, author of “The Intelligence Trap.”
On the contrary, scientists have discovered certain specific personality traits and abilities.
“These are people who can predict for example whether a civil war will break out in a troubled region or who will win the Olympics,” Robson told the BBC CrowdScience program.
They have a natural talent for sifting through the evidence and seeing where it leads in the future.
hope
The term “super forecaster” was born out of a tournament, the objective of which was to seek new approaches in political predictions, called Good judgment project (Good Judgment Project, in Spanish) and funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity or IARPA, for its acronym in English.
Under the leadership of political scientist Philip E. Tetlock, since 2011, the team has invited thousands of participants from all walks of life to test their prediction skills.
Four years, 500 questions and over a million predictions later, the most successful 2% has been called a super forecaster.
The project then evolved into a business forecasting company run by Tetlock, whose previous work had shown that professional forecasters were in fact not very accurate.
After analyzing 82,361 predictions made by 284 experts in fields such as political science, economics and journalism, he concluded that “Chimpanzees throwing darts at possible outcomes” will likely get similar results, as he clarified in his book “The political judgment of the experts” (2005).
These super forecasters, who had not arrived as experts, could they play a better role?, Asked the political scientist.
Really open mind
The answer was: s. Some of them had the innate ability to hit predictions.
But why? What did they have that was special?
“They were often curious, they were open-minded, they were ready to seek evidence and question their assumptions, and they were also intellectually humble, so they were able to recognize their own biases and take them into account. “, explains Robson.
It wasn’t just about hearing or reading many opinions, but having “the ability to update predictions or opinions based on information found … and we can’t all do that, because often we are very attached to our beliefs “.
“Super forecasters are very good at letting go of what they thought was right and taking a different point of view.”
“They are psychologically distinctive,” Tetlock himself told the BBC in 2015.
If I had to identify anything in particular, it’s that while most people think of their beliefs as something very valuable that defines them, even sacred, super forecasters tend to view their beliefs as something that defines them. hypothesis to be tested, which should be examined based on the evidence. ”
“This means they tend to be better at making initial estimates as soon as they are asked a question, but they’re even better at updating what they think as they get more information,” so they can recalibrate whether the probability is higher or lower, the political scientist explained.
Test yourself
So, like scientists, super forecasters view their predictions as hypotheses and are always on the lookout for new information, carefully evaluating this data and updating their predictions.
But in addition to having a genuinely open mind, they excel at analytical thinking.
Could it be that you too?
Try to answer this question from David Robson.
“The wind is blowing from the east and an electric train is heading west. In which cardinal direction is the locomotive blowing smoke?
Yes ?
The answer is that the smoke is not going one way. “I said it was an electric train.”
Other?
In this case, it is about three people: Jack, Ana and Jorge.
Jack looks at Ana but Ana looks at Jorge. Jack is married but not George. Is there a married person looking at a single person?
The options are: “Yes”, “No” or “Unable to determine”. The answer is at the end of the article.
“These types of questions seek to establish whether you are just getting carried away by your hunches or if you are really analyzing what is being said and questioning it,” says Robson.
And here’s the point: one might think that reading a lot and being analytical is a trait of very intelligent people, however, that is not enough. With curiosity, having a lot of intelligence can lead you to wrong conclusions.
“Often times, the smarter you are, the better off you are at finding all kinds of reasons and motives for your opinions and spotting small differences in other people’s argumentation, to demolish what they are saying.
“So the problem is, the smarter you are, the better off you are at deceiving yourself and others. ”
Both%
It may be good that we are not limited by our intellectual capacity, because it means that we will be able to improve as forecasters.
But there is something else to keep in mind.
In addition to an open mind and analytical thinking, making good predictions requires something called probabilistic thinking.
And someone who has it is Michael Storey, one of the original members of that select 2% group of Good judgment project, who made a career as a super forecaster and continued to work for Good Judgment Inc.
“I’m a very curious person, and that’s probably my main motivation for most of the things I do.”
In her conversation with BBC CrowdScience, Storey stressed the importance of having an external point of view.
“There is a theory that says if you get too close to things you tend to get more wrong. What happens is, without realizing it, you choose to pay attention to a part of it. ‘information and ignoring things that don’t match your point of view – this is called confirmation bias. ”
Mentally getting out of a situation to take into account the opinions of others and looking back for examples can be very helpful.
Imagine that you are at a wedding and they ask you if you think the relationship is going to last.
It’s easy to get carried away by the romance and joy of the moment, “and in most cases the end is happy,” but super forecasters adjust that impression by going beyond immediate information.
“And when you do, you can do a more sober assessment and look, like, if they’re older or religious, then they’re a lot less likely to break up; this way you integrate other factors that you can get from the outside that are close to you. , and you get that outside perspective. ”
What you’re doing is adjusting your hunches with the help of information and something very important, Storey points out: pattern matching. “When we test people to see how likely they are to be good forecasters, we are not testing their knowledge of a subject or something like that, but rather their experience. pattern recognition skills of images “.
And although we don’t have all of these natural talents, the good news is that researchers believe these skills can be learned. In fact, there are courses to acquire them.
Why do it?
Because even if you’re not going to be focusing on predicting geopolitical events or stock market movements, learning to think analytically and question assumptions and beliefs can help you decide whether to change your mind. job, buy that house or invest in your friends’ business.
Jack, Ana and Jorge: the answer
Since they don’t tell us anything about Ana’s marital status, the answer seems to be “cannot be determined”, but it is “yes”.
It is not necessary to know if Ana is married or not.
If so, it’s the married person watching a bachelor: Jorge. Otherwise, Jack is the married person watching a single person, Ana.
.
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