Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdmoreira | Hacker News Reader

A lot of the comments are dismissive. I read the book on this superforecasters project / people / studies. Turns out (some) people can learn about the world enough to build probabilistic weighted trees for the different outcomes.

Their predictions are benchmarked using a statistical tool named Brier Score.

They fare pretty well, this is totally legit.

View on HN

Yes, commenters should read the book (Superforcasting). The forecasters in The Good Judgment Project are assessed on their self-assigned confidence in their prediction and how soon they can make their prediction. Some people seem to be provably better at this than others, they are Superforcasters.

What was most useful to me in the book was the notion of being more specific and testable when thinking about the future. I think the better you are at predicting the future (a delta between you and everyone else, not 100% accuracy, which is impossible) the better you are at understanding the world and the better you can plan ahead.

You have convinced me to pick up the book for $15 rather than find a workaround for the paywall article.

Good choice! It's one of those "one idea book" but it's a good idea. You CAN do a decent job at forecasting as a human and the book does explain to some extent: 1) how to benchmark predictions. 2) how these people approach making a prediction.

Thanks! I was also planning to be dismissive and say something snarky before reading your comment, so it is appreciated. I sincerely hope the forecasting process is legitimately something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUxMY77i0q4

Reply on news.ycombinator.com