The Past Speaks

Tim Harford has published a truly excellent reflective and self-critical post on the power of wishful thinking. The post uses the results of the Brexit referendum, which were clearly not foreseen by the prediction markets, to illustrate some broader points about how think about futures.  The post will doubtless interest many people who enjoyed reading the recent book Superforecasters. In the post, Harford mentions that he worked with Vince Cable in the famous scenario planning development at Shell.

P.S. In a great piece of visual humour, the Harvard economist Greg Mankiw published this photograph to symbolize the results of Brexit on his blog.