Most years, when our calendrical odometers turn over from a string of nines to zeroes, we take stock of the year behind us with some mix of satisfaction and regret, and set goals, make resolutions, and lay out plans for the year to come. On public questions plainly beyond our control — politics, the economy — we turn to pundits and other professional prognosticators to help us out, to better prepare for and take advantage of what the future will likely bring.
Any confidence we have in doing so is always partly an illusion. What we most want to know about — whether the stock market will rise or fall, who will win a competitive election — are precisely the most difficult things to predict, and we are all subject to the pundit fallacy, to talking our book, to inclining toward predictions that are emotionally resonant.
