- Forecasting is a real skill that can be cultivated rather easily
- Average expert a terrible forecaster but can tell a compelling story with conviction
- Our skill at predicting lies in what we're trying to predict, how far into the future it is and under what circumstances
- Best way to improve your forecasting skill - forecast, measure, revise and repeat
- Setting a clear goal and finding an appropriate measure is extremely vital for any goal in any field
- What super forecasters thought less important than how they thought.
- If have a proven algorithm, use that instead of own intuition. Goal one day is to couple strengths of machines and humans to make best predictions
- For any belief, must know what disconfirming evidence would change your mind
- Always budget some doubt into your opinions and decisions. Never be blindly confident
- Forecasts must have timelines, explicit definitions, easy to judge, define likelihood of X happening, accountability
- Calibration and resolution are two facets of good forecasting. Calibration - something happens 40% of the time when you predict that. Resolution - confidence and decisiveness
- The average guess of big crowds is often very accurate. The wisdom of large crowds
- Dragonfly eye - getting very many perspectives is vital to good forecasting
- Post mortems are vital to improve decisions and forecasting
- Regression to the mean is a valuable tool to test the role of luck and a good thing to keep in mind
- Breaking a large, difficult question into smaller answerable questions is a good way to arrive at a good back of the envelope estimate
- Being able to detach self and step back from opinions and estimates allows you to vastly improve your thinking and forecasting (Soros). Also, tweaking the wording of the question helps think about it in a different way
- Active open mindedness important. Beliefs are hypothesis to be tested, not treasures to be guarded
- Unfortunately most people are attracted and side with confidence over competence. Beware
- Do not fall into the trap of thinking that something with a high probability will certainly happen
- Super forecasters believe less in fate than most. Probabilistic thinking over deterministic
- Must blend inside and outside view, weighing outside view more
- Super forecasters incrementally update forecasts often as they get better data and weigh relevance and importance of data in updates. Be cautious of under or overreacting to new information.
- Perpetual beta and growth over fixed mindset vital
- Effective practice must be accompanied with timely, clear and consistent feedback
- Like in any other field, grit, or the passionate perseverance of a long term goal, is very important to improve forecasting skills
- Be careful not to let feelings and emotions masquerade as rational thoughts
- Teams of super forecasters made even better forecasts than a super forecaster working alone
- People tend to be givers, marchers or takers and perhaps counterintuitively, givers more often end up on top
- If have a good group, can be beneficial to extremize opinions as these people are often too conservative
- Leaders must be confident, decisive and deliver a vision. However, this goes against many qualities common in super forecasters. This can be overcome by copying Moltke - being humble because everything is uncertain and must adapt to all new info but once a decision is made, must be committed to it
- Intellectually humility and flexibility very important
- When in a leadership position, let people know what you want them to do but not how. Let them surprise you with their ingenuity
- Being a super forecasters is very difficult and exhausting
- Average people fall for trap of scope of insensitivity (not altering decision based on scale)
What I got out of it
- Great read on how to improve your forecasting skill - active open mindedness, continual updating (perpetual beta), intellectual humility and flexibility all key
