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Thinking superpowers
You don’t need to be a superforecaster (nor even be making any forecasts) to benefit from two of their key skills
There are many possible reasons why we might engage in thinking. At this precise moment, you may be thinking, what on earth is his point with a sentence like this, for example. Or perhaps you are thinking about what you might be doing instead of reading this piece, and evaluating which is preferable. At other times, you may be thinking about more momentous matters, like changing jobs or a new romantic relationship, or about how best to save for your retirement.
A common characteristic across much of our thinking is that we are trying to resolve uncertainty. This is definitely the case when it concerns speculating about what might happen in the future, an activity also known as forecasting. Some people do this for a living: they tell us what the weather will be, how the economy will perform, or who will win the next election. Others do it as part of another day job in which they claim some expertise. Over the past several months, we have had many opportunities to hear forecasts from a wide range of such experts and commentators about the expected number of COVID-19 deaths, the number of hospital admissions, the utilization rate of intensive care units, or the effects on the economy or education of…
