The expert consensus can be wrong—someone who had forecasted the collapse of the Soviet Union would have deserved most of the kudos that came to him. But the fantasy scenario is hugely unlikely. Even though foxes, myself included, aren’t really a conformist lot, we get worried anytime our forecasts differ radically from those being produced by our competitors. Quite a lot of evidence suggests that aggregate or group forecasts are more accurate than individual ones, often somewhere between 15 and 20 percent more accurate depending on the discipline. That doesn’t necessarily mean the group
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