Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

by Scott Adams

Straight-line predictions told us the population would increase faster than the food supply. The opposite happened. Straight-line predictions told us we would run out of fossil fuels, but we keep finding new sources. We humans are not good at predicting. And any notion that we have developed that superpower, in light of all observations to the contrary, is pure loserthink. Straight-line predictions are generally wrong, and dangerous if you act on them. Still, they are not useless. Sometimes a straight-line prediction can encourage people to make the changes necessary to avoid a bad outcome. And sometimes you can rule out some possible outcomes, which can be helpful. But don’t confuse helpful with accurate.