How To Predict Everything

by William Poundstone

There’s a useful calculation being used by Wall Street, Silicon Valley and maths professors all over the world, and it predicts that the human race has only 760 years left to live.

Using its formula, we can look at the world around us with new eyes. What is the chance that there are multiple universes? How long will Hamilton run? Will the US stock market continue to perform as well this century as it has for the last hundred years? And are we all doomed?

Genres: Nonfiction, Mathematics, Science

Paperback

About the author

William Poundstone is the author of more than ten non-fiction books, including 'Fortune's Formula', which was the Amazon Editors' Pick for #1 non-fiction book of 2005. Poundstone has written for The New York Times, Psychology Today, Esquire, Harpers, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review. He has appeared on the Today Show, The David Letterman Show and hundreds of radio talk-shows throughout the world. Poundstone studied physics at MIT and many of his ideas concern the social and financial impact of scientific ideas. His books have sold over half a million copies worldwide.

Reviews

[Jeremy Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This feels like a bait-and-switch because the title and blurb on the book make it sound like an exploration of different prediction methods, but instead it's all about predicting when our civilisation will end (Doomsday).

Nonetheless, Poundstone does a great job of explaining these theories in an engaging way. He sets up an argument, and then brings in the counterarguments, weaving together the threads of progress in this field with plenty of anecdotes and witticisms from the academic pioneers.

Poundstone has made this flow very well while keeping it dense with information calories. Despite not being what I expected, I found myself enjoying it and stuck with it.

For the most part this talks about Gott's take on the Copernican method and Bayes' Theorem, first generally, and then applying them to various ideas like the Fermi paradox, the paperclip optimiser/singularity, vacuum decay, and much more.

[Robert Wingfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting snippets in here, but predicting everything? Well, after seeing the sad demise of the yacht called the Bayesian, I wonder what it's all about. The first application of the theorem says it predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, as being between the next year and some time far in the future. Er, yes, you could have asked me the same question, and I'd have used the same timescale. Let me predict something else, in the next year, there will be more walls being built between the Soviet bloc and the rest of the world.
That's enough theorem. The rest of the book looks at individually interesting concepts, including a fine reason why we haven't yet been contacted by extraterrestrials - I can certainly believe that. For snippets of other folks' ideas and turning science into mental pictures for common people, this is a good read, but the only real conclusion is that mankind is doomed, sometime between now and 18 million years hence. Don't start reading any long books, or maybe, do.

[Philip William · Rating 2 out of 5]

I doubt that this book will help you predict anything let alone everything.

It majors on predicting the end of the world/civilization as we know it. It is interesting how some people go about this but I doubt that you will change your opinion of the answer having read the book.

Occasionally it will look at the prediction of other things such as the survival rate of companies but I have read better articles this year on this subject than this book.

[Tejas Bansod · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book of 2019,
This does the job well,
This doesn’t teach the “how” of prediction but it gives you detailed and indexical information about why do we predict and what extended of observations are taken upon in doing so.

Boring to pick up at 2024 but for my 2019 self,
This would be an amazing read.
This hasn’t aged well, due to internet outburst.

[Alan Eyre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written but hard for me to grasp, especially given that, as it turned out, the subject didn’t interest me.

[Andre · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit rambling with some gems like the quantum suicide machine and sleeping beauty.

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 4 out of 5]

What are the odds of humanity's long-term survival? How to Predict Everything takes a pinch of Bayes's theorem and provides a witty and energetic romp through this and a mishmash of other philosophical and cosmological thought experiments. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020...

[Ferhat Culfaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mistake purchase. Only one chapter on predicting using Bayesian methods. The rest of is all about origins of doomsday, apocalypse, super intelligence theories.

Prose and concept is all over the place.


Avoid.

[Qingyang · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author tells good stories but I found that he was a bit out of focus and without a structured argument. I found it a bit dull to read. The maths and doomsday argument is interesting though, and I think he could have written a more interesting and shorter book with less stories.

[Deepak · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring not much to it.