This is what we're going to do. It's going to work out well because I said so.

I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, what's the secret to making a great prediction? My prediction would have been

right if these things had happened.

Also, why do even the most successful people have bad days?

The eggs were overcooked.

Angela Duckworth.

Stephen Dubner.

There is at least one way that I would very much like to be more like my son, Solomon, who's a college

sophomore. He seems capable of making predictions in a way that is totally divorced from

emotion, even when he has a stake in the thing he's predicting. So as an example, he works in

politics. Okay. And he follows things closely and he has some decent information.

So he often has a pretty good sense of who's going to win a campaign, whether it's his candidate or the other.

And even if it's the opponent, he's pretty realistic about not letting his fan interests get in the way.

The same thing for sports.

And he'll even say, I have a lot of confidence in this particular projection.

Even though he has never studied with the forecasting guru Phil Tetlock, who you know,

it's probably never heard of Phil Tetlock.

He's able to really assess a probability about something that he cares about and then

follow it in a really unemotional way. And when I watch him do that, I think I would like to have

some of that, not just predictions and not just betting and not just sports and politics, but how can

I and maybe other people learn to make decisions

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