Assertion certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Johnson: Sci-fi predicts the future more accurately than official forecasters

Steven B. Johnson · a16z Podcast | Seeing into the Future -- Making Decisions, Telling Stories · Jan 2, 2019 · at 7:57

Author Steven B. Johnson discusses the predictive power of science fiction relative to formal forecasting models on the a16z Podcast.

0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.0s
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“I mean, I certainly think that you would find more things that ended up happening in fictional accounts than, you know, official people making predictions about the future outside of a fictional context.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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