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Photo: uncutIt’s impossible to predict the future, but humans can’t help themselves. From the economy to the presidency to the Super Bowl, educated and intelligent people promise insight and repeatedly fail by wide margins. These mistakes and misses go unpunished, both publicly and in our brain, which has become trained to ignore the record of those who make them. In this hour of Freakonomics Radio, we’ll dream of the day when bad predictors pay – when the accuracy rate of pundits appear next to their faces on TV, when the weatherman who botches the 5-day forecast by 20 degrees has to make his next appearance soaking wet. We’ll also look at the deep roots of divining what tomorrow brings, from the invention of religion to new understandings of how we make decisions about the future.
There’s a more extensive blog post with background research, photos, and links coming shortly. For now, you can listen or download via the link above, or read a transcript here. This episode and four more hours will be airing on public radio stations across the country this summer at various times, so check out your local station’s website. And you can subscribe to the Freakonomics Radio podcast on iTunes or via RSS.
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Of course, your show is sort of a prediction about prediction.
I am quite sure that you are getting at precisely one-half of the truth. In the modern world we use numbers quantitatively. The ancient Greeks, in particular, Pythagoras, used them qualitatively. You might conclude that we’ve improved our understanding since Pythagoras, and certainly we have, but we have also lost something. What exactly did the ancient Greeks mean by “all is arranged according to Number”? In their view, there was a Divine Principle at work. If there was any wisdom expressed by their sages, we’ve lost touch with it.
I think history moves in time cycles that are flagged by meaningful coincidences. In fact, I’ve just written a book about it called The Synchronicity Code. To me, this is the real “hidden side of everything”. Now, one would think that this puts me in the prediction business, and to a degree it does. But what I’ve learned about prediction is that usually (although not always), a pattern to events can unfold across time in more than one way and still adhere precisely to the underlying numeric form.
The Chinese sage Lao Tzu said, “He who knows does not predict, he who predicts does not know.” He might have meant (in part) that the underlying pattern could be known, and that is wise to be aware of, but it would be foolish to be trapped in “the illusion of certainty”.
So I favor a nuanced view. But just in case I got my triangulation right, I’m predicting a surprise political development and/or uprising in China in the 4th quarter of 2011. Mark your calendar!
Could the hour longs also be made available as podcasts.
Thanks