marginalium noun

the notes one makes in the margins.

A short note on

on the accuracy of futurist predictions (usually not very accurate)

November 4, 2022

source: danluu.com

by Dorian Minors

I did brain science at Cambridge. Now I'm a behaviour science professor. Read my shit.

On the accuracy of futurist predictions (usually not very accurate).

In particular, people who were into “big ideas” … generally fared poorly, whether or not their favored big ideas were correct .. Another common trait of poor predictors is lack of anything resembling serious evaluation of past predictive errors … By contrast, people who had (relatively) accurate predictions had a deep understanding of the problem and also tended to have a record of learning lessons from past predictive errors.

Perhaps unsurprising. But the detail of the analysis provides very interesting insight into what kinds of things are predictable.

If you don’t do the thinking, the thinking will be done for you.

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