An acquaintance, long-time Economist subscriber, told me that he has kept the annual “forecast” issues published each December about the year ahead. “They’re amazingly wrong,” he said. “Very little of their forecast turned out to be correct.”
They wrote these predictions with great confidence. What does it tell us that a group of smart people have this much difficulty predicting the events and trends in next 12-18 months? We’re addicted to punditry on current events and predictions about what comes next, even if we know they’re more likely to be wrong than correct. We somehow weight the confidence of their statements much more than we care about their track record of accuracy.
Be prepared for different scenarios, while being skeptical about anyone ability to correctly predict future events.
