There are many things that are good about this book. Philip E Tetlock is a scholar with an impressive number of publications and citation. The book is well-written and easy to read, but that is also the best that can be said. The book falls into a long line of bestselling books that have an extravagantly attractive title that has little to do with the content, and a first chapter that is all about promises of what is to be delivered in the following pages. As such, this is all too common in the management literature in general as we have known it since the early 1980s, maybe even earlier. It throws around the names of famous people and stories people can relate to. But what is the problem with that, the reader may ask. Well the problem is that these types of management books continue to have a significant influence on practice, much more so than scientific articles or more instrumental books on intelligence analysis. This is not a new phenomenon either but has been going on since “In search of Excellence” or maybe even longer. For the most part though these books are being discredited in the long run, but then it is too late, as their content has already been put into practice. For one thing there is nothing that has been presented in the book that helps explain why the project was better at predicting events than anybody else, if we are to believe that that is true. More worryingly, the book does not say how the authors and the project beat the other analysts, if it was by simply using a more vague language in its estimates or by the way correct answers were calculated. The rules of these competitions are never explained, at least not in the book. The main idea in the book is that if you give precise questions and ask for answers expressed in numbers for specific time frames, then you can also sit back and wait to measure the results. You will then know how good you are. That by itself is not a bad idea. Instead we are led on a series of loose threads and assumptions, by the authors who are expert analysts because they did so – “it took years” - and won. It seems like a proven way to sell consultancy, but does not convince a reader who is even half awake. Clearly psychology is important for decision making and forecasting, especially when confronted with social situations where an outcome is the result of the interaction and the expectations of several individuals with different interests and values. Some of these problems can be modelled using game theory, but the authors fail to see that this is only one half of the equation. The other half is what you actually know. The intelligence reality of Mr Tetlock is much like that of a psychologist in a poker game. He does not know what the other person knows but tries to guess it based on his behavior. That is a much riskier way of solving a problem than using resources to actually find out. Good intelligence is about finding out what hand was actually dealt. This will give us certainty to know how we could win the game, or at least avoid losing more money than what was in the pot. Psychology is important in knowing how the player will behave. It is this other part of the equation—that the psychological insights are valuable—that Tetlock introduces in this book. It’s a good suggestion to test or check guesses to learn from them, but it’s hardly a new or novel idea. It’s true that it is “astonishing” how many organizations do not check the intelligence they produce or buy, but it’s hardly a new problem or even surprising. The book is one in a long tradition of “hype” books which are so popular and not only in the Anglo-Saxon world, similar to Nassim Taleb’s book “Black Swan”, which the authors also refer to. You take something that is merely common sense and present it in an appealing way, such as that complete unknowns are like black swans. The reader will not have learned anything new, but old wisdom is frightfully well packaged, thus appealing. It does not help that the authors disagree with Taleb in that they think that many swans that people say are black are in fact grey (another metaphor of the same type). I said at the beginning that this is a good book. The reason for this is that it contains many good rules of thumb. Unfortunately, they are not listed in any single place in the book. We should break large questions into many small questions. We should make scorekeeping an integral part of intelligence analysis (p. 259). That is a simple but important lesson. Thus the book is worth reading.

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书评：超级预测：预测的艺术和科学。皇冠出版社，纽约，纽约。Tetlock。E.菲利普·加德纳·丹（2015）

这本书有很多优点。Philip E Tetlock是一位学者，拥有大量出版物和引文。这本书写得好，容易阅读，但这也是最好的。这本书属于畅销书的一长串，其书名极具吸引力，与内容无关，而第一章则是关于在接下来的几页中所承诺的内容。因此，自1980年代初以来，甚至更早以来，我们就已经知道，这在管理文献中太普遍了。它四处散布着名人的名字和人们可以联想到的故事。但是读者可能会问这是什么问题。问题是这类管理书籍继续对实践产生重大影响，比科学文章或更多有关情报分析的工具书更是如此。这也不是一个新现象，但是自“追求卓越”以来甚至持续了很长时间。尽管从长远来看，尽管这些书在很大程度上被抹黑了，但为时已晚，因为它们的内容已经付诸实践。一方面，如果我们相信这是真的，那本书中没有任何东西可以帮助解释为什么该项目比其他任何人在预测事件方面都更好。更令人担忧的是，这本书没有说明作者和该项目如何击败其他分析师，如果只是在估计中使用一种更加模糊的语言或通过计算正确答案的方式。这些竞赛的规则从未被解释过，至少在书中没有解释。本书的主要思想是，如果您给出精确的问题并要求在特定的时间范围内以数字表示的答案，那么您也可以坐下来等待测量结果。这样您就会知道自己有多好。这本身并不是一个坏主意。取而代之的是，由专家分析的作者带领我们进行一系列松散的讨论和假设，因为他们这样做了-“花了好几年”并赢得了胜利。这似乎是一种行销顾问的行之有效的方法，但是并不能说服半夜清醒的读者。显然，心理学对于决策和预测很重要，尤其是在面对社会状况时，结果是相互作用的结果以及几个具有不同兴趣和价值观的个人的期望。其中一些问题可以使用博弈论来建模，但是作者没有看到这只是等式的一半。另一半是您实际知道的。Tetlock先生的情报现实与扑克游戏中的心理学家非常相似。他不知道对方知道什么，但会根据自己的行为来猜测。与实际使用资源相比，这是解决问题的风险更大的方法。良好的智力是要找出实际处理过的手。这将使我们能够确定如何赢得比赛，或者至少避免损失比底池中更多的钱。心理对于了解玩家的行为很重要。Tetlock在本书中介绍的正是等式的另一部分-心理洞察力很有价值。建议您测试或检查猜测以从中学习，但这不是一个新的或新颖的想法。的确，有许多组织不检查他们生产或购买的情报真是“令人惊讶”，但这不是一个新问题，甚至也不会令人惊讶。这本书是“炒作”书籍的悠久传统中的一本，在“盎格鲁撒克逊人”世界中如此受欢迎，不仅如此，而且与作者纳西姆·塔勒布（Nassim Taleb）所著的“黑天鹅”（Black Swan）类似。您采取的只是常识，并以一种吸引人的方式呈现它，例如完全未知的事物就像黑天鹅。读者不会学到任何新东西，但是古老的智慧包装得很好，因此很有吸引力。作者不同意Taleb的观点，这无济于事，因为他们认为人们所说的许多天鹅实际上都是灰色的（另一个相同类型的隐喻）。我在一开始就说这是一本好书。原因是它包含许多良好的经验法则。不幸的是，它们没有在书中的任何地方列出。我们应该将大问题分解成许多小问题。我们应该将记分保持作为情报分析不可或缺的一部分（第259页）。这是一个简单但重要的课程。因此，这本书值得一读。