On the weekend of July 30th, Edge convened one of its “Master Classes.” In the past, these classes have featured short courses taught by people such as psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman (“A Short Course in Thinking About Thinking”); behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Sendhil Mullainathan, again with Kahneman (“A Short Course in Behavioral Economics”); and genomic researchers George Church and J. Craig Venter (“A Short Course on Synthetic Genomics”).

This year, the psychologist and social scientist Philip E. Tetlock presented the findings based on his work on forecasting as part of the Good Judgment Project. In 1984, Tetlock began holding “forecasting tournaments” in which selected candidates were asked questions about the course of events: In the wake of a natural disaster, what policies will be changed in the United States? When will North Korea test nuclear weapons? Candidates examine the questions in teams. They are not necessarily experts, but attentive, shrewd citizens.

Steven Pinker, who has written about Tetlock’s work on Superforecasting, noted that “Tetlock is one of the very, very best minds in the social sciences today. He has come up with one brilliant idea after another, and superforecasting is no exception. Everyone agrees that the way to know if an idea is right is to see whether it accurately predicts the future. But which ideas, which methods, which people have an actual, provable track record of non-obvious predictions vindicated by the course of events? The answers will surprise you, and have radical implications for politics, policy, journalism, education, and even epistemology—how we can best gain knowledge about the world we live in.”

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