William Leith12 April 2012
Future Babble
by Dan Gardner
(Virgin, £8.99)
Dan Gardner, who wrote an excellent book called Risk, about how likely things are to happen, has written another excellent book in a similar vein. This one is about people who try to predict the future, and why they are often wrong. They were wrong about the First World War, the Wall Street Crash, the Bomb. Not only are experts often wrong but we tend to believe them. So what’s going on? For one thing, the world is so complex that even if you know a lot about it, you never know enough to predict the future. If you get one thing wrong, your calculations, projected years ahead, will be way out. Also, we want to believe the experts. They’re all we’ve got.
