This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
We're surrounded by people who tell us they know what's going to happen in the future.
A lot of people have no idea that Trump is headed for a historic defeat.
Bear Stearns is fine.
Don't move your money from bear.
That's just being silly.
These predictions have a few things in common.
The commentators have complete confidence in themselves.
We, as the audience, love to hear them make a complicated world seem simple.
And finally, no one ever pays a.
Serious price for being wrong.
Donald Trump wins the presidency.
The Patriots win the Super Bowl.
Brady has his fifth bear Stearns in the bargain bin, sold to rival JPMorgan Chase for just $2 a share on.
Today'S show, our fascination with making predictions and why we may need a revolution in the way we make them.
If you play the game the way it really should be played, the forecasting game, you're much more subject to embarrassment.
We look at how some people actually are better than others at predicting what's going to happen in the future.
Ironically, these aren't the people you usually find on television bloviating about what's going to happen next week.
They're ordinary people who happen to know a very important secret.