With inflationary pressures showing signs of easing, the FTSE 100 near record highs and China’s population shrinking for the first time in 60 years, 2023 has given analysts something to chew on.
But how different is the world at the end of the year? And how accurately can predict the event that will form? More importantly, can you do a better job than the people, known as superforecasters, who are paid to do this?
The science of superforecasting has its roots in the work of psychologist Philip Tetlock who, for almost two decades since 1987, painstakingly collected thousands of predictions about the future from hundreds of experts – initially to prove that they were terrible. (Spoiler: He’s not good.)
However, Tetlock continued to found the Good Judgment project in 2011 with academic colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, in response to the search for the best way to predict geopolitical events launched by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, an agency in the US intelligence community.
In 2015, the Good Judgment project won the competition, with “leading intelligence analysts with access to classified data”. It now offers a commercial forecasting service and counts Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to Boris Johnson when he was British prime minister, among its fans.
Good Judgment is based on an initial understanding of the combined projections of professional superforecasters, which is said to take priority over gut feeling. They are not necessarily subject matter experts, but tend to be open-minded and data-driven.
So we’ve teamed up with Good Judgment to come up with 10 questions about how 2023 will play out; from Vladimir Putin’s future as Russia’s president to China’s gross domestic product growth rate. Dozens of superforecasters will tackle it – and we’re curious to see how instinctive our readers are.
Take our interactive quiz to find out how your answers compare to Good Judgment professionals, as well as other FT readers. The quiz will remain open until the end of January.
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Finally, how will we understand the prophecy? After all, January is a long way from deciding who is right and who is wrong.
Good Judgment superforecasters will update their predictions throughout the year. At the end of 2023, we will analyze how collective opinion has changed over the months.
We will also make the most important declaration about who made the most prescient predictions in the first place: the superforecasters – or the FT readers.
This is an important award because, as Tetlock and Dan Gardner explain in their book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Predictionwe are all forecasters by necessity: “When we think about changing jobs, getting married, buying a house, making investments, launching a product, or retiring, we make decisions based on how we anticipate the future.”