what do u know

Researchers have shown that nearly all of us are overconfident, sometimes to the point of comedy. Eighty percent of students predict they will finish in the top half of their class. Seventy-five percent of mutual fund managers think they are above average at their jobs. Almost 90% of us think we're better than the typical driver.

The more you know, the more likely you are to overestimate your ability to predict the future. Philip Tetlock, a professor of political science at Berkeley, spent years surveying the views of top political scientists and analysts on world events and found that these supposed geniuses were usually wrong even when they were most confident. On predictions in which they indicated they had 80% or more confidence, they were correct only 45% of the time. Overall, they had no more ability to forecast the future than a coin flip.