I am currently reading "Future Babble" by Dan Gardner, and note the introductory chapter's reference to an IMF economist's view that his profession's "record of failure to predict recessions in virtually unblemished".
Although "Future Babble" seems to set up a dichotomy, rather than a discourse, between technological optimists and ecological pessimists, Gardner's perspicacity cannot be faulted.
The case of Robert Schiller, the Yale economist who wrote "Irrational Exuberance" in 2000, and revised this in 2005, is used by Gardner to illustrate a particular problem with professional experts. Although Schiller was one of the few economists to predict the global financial disaster of 2008, in his capacity as an adviser to a US bank he "felt the need to use restraint". The consensus at the bank was that there was no housing bubble in the US, a position Schiller's conceded because: "Deviating too far from consensus leaves one feeling potentially ostracised from the group, with the risk that one may be terminated".
"Groupthink", as Gardner argues, "is very much a disease that can strike experts. In fact, psychologist Irving Janis coined the term "groupthink" to describe expert behaviour...."
My own strategy for dealing with expert and wider non-expert "future babble", and indeed group think, is to treat these as background noise: something to be acknowledged, ignored and taken into account as appropriate.
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