A hike for unorthodox wisdom
Hesper had spent the last day hiking through the majestic valley. The hot sun bared down on him and he took another swig from his canteen. He knew that salvation was near.
A small cabin stood in the center of the valley, surrounded by spirals of vegetables poking their heads out of the ground. Hesper could smell something sweet being baked inside.
“Oh, hello there,” a middle-aged woman waved from the window. “You look parched. Why don’t you come in?”
Hesper entered the modest home, which looked even more modest from the inside.
“My name is Prosper,” she introduced herself. “Come sit down. Do you want some tea?”
“My name is Hesper, and thank you. I’ve heard many things about you.”
“You’ve heard I am a superforecaster and have come to seek my wisdom?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. I can pay if you want.”
“No, it’s not necessary. I have everything I need right here. Honestly I never meant to be a superforecaster, but it seems like I have a gift for clairvoyance.”
“How does this work? Do I get three questions?”
“No, nothing nearly so formal. Look, I’ve got some banana bread in the oven. Perhaps we can chat until it’s done.”
“Okay. The first thing I need to know is the purpose of life.”
“Hmm, I could give you my own opinion but that isn’t how superforecasting works. It isn’t about advice, it’s more about predicting future events.”
“Okay. Will I ever become successful?”
“I’d say it’s fifty-fifty.”
“Fifty-fifty? What does that mean?”
“Superforecasters can’t literally see the future. We assign probabilities to the likelihood of certain events taking place in the future. Over time we check our previous results and update our priors.”
“That seems a bit less mystical than a guru.”
“It’s meant to be more useful than a guru.”
“Can I ask whether I will ever find love?”
“That’s probably more up to you, but I expect it to be about 90-95%.”
“Is there anything you can guarantee?”
“If I could guarantee something, you could do it too. That wouldn’t be very interesting.”
Suddenly a small bell rang.
“Looks like my bread is ready to be taken out.”
“That’s it? Was my whole trip here just a waste then?”
“What you got out of this conversation is up to you, but I’d say the odds of this trip being a waste is close to zero.”
I’m fascinated by the superforecasters, people who are objectively better at predicting future events than the general public. There’s a great book about them which you should read.
I thought it’d be fun to do an inversion of the classic hermit guru trope, where people seek wisdom from an old man on a mountain. Here, the main character travels to a hot valley to visit a woman who doesn’t give pithy wisdom but hard numbers.
After all, aren’t superforecasters the closest we’ll actually get to fortune tellers?