I begin today expanding upon my previous analysis of Nate Silver’s distinction between “Riverians” and “Village People.” Silver says that River People possess the following two “clusters of attributes”[1]: COGNITIVE CLUSTER PERSONALITY CLUSTER Analytical Competitive Abstract Critical Decoupling Independent-minded (contrarian) Risk-tolerant “Analytical” – Nate says this is “to resolve something complex…
Rigorous Imagination
Summa Contra Argentum: Pars Secunda
My second objection to Nate’s book is his central dichotomy of “The River” and “The Village.” Nate defines “The River” thusly in the glossary at the end of the work: “A geographical metaphor for the territory covered in this book, a sprawling ecosystem of like-minded, highly analytical, and competitive people…
Popular Culture
Summa Contra Argentum: Pars Prima
My first objection to Nate Silver’s book is the title, or to be perfectly accurate, the subtitle: The Art of Risking Everything. I can only assume that some publisher or agent demanded this subtitle, because it seems to go against a fair amount of what is actually in the book. Risking everything is…
The Cult of Prediction
Summa Contra Argentum: Praefatio
Ancient (and less ancient) writers used to publish works entitled (in Latin) “Summa [fill in the blank].” A direct translation would be “All [fill in the blank].” This was meant to convey that the author was trying to cover all the major issues in whatever topic he (usually he) was…
Forecasting
Letter to the Columnist: Effective Altruism
The New York Times’ Peter Coy is “a veteran business and economics columnist.” Today he sent a newsletter out that was headlined “Effective Altruism Is Flawed. But What’s the Alternative?” I have thoughts. Coy writes, Of course, if you’ve read anything I’ve written here, you may sense that “rigorous academic…
ISBM article on my ideas about the “Cult of Prediction”
It was a great honor to share the central themes of my book Fatal Certainty with such an accomplished group of practitioners and academics, exactly the sort of people who can help to change the mindset driving quantitative (and even older-style non-quantitative) single-point forecasting, and it’s even a greater honor…
ISBM 2024 Academic Conference Presentation
I am honored and happy to be presenting some of the ideas from my forthcoming book, “Fatal Certainty,” this afternoon at the 2024 Joint Academic Conference & Members Meeting, “Foresight in B2B: the Next 40 Years in B2B Marketing,” at the Institute for the Study of Business Markets at the…
Forecasting
Thinking, Fast, Slow… and Other
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman died March 27. He was one of the few thinkers who managed to influence thought in multiple fields, most notably psychology and economics, but also in international relations and many other spheres dependent on decision-making. In 2011, Kahneman published his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, to universal…
Economics
Everything Is Predictable? More Blunt Observations
May 22, 2024 I suspect we all doubt ourselves from time to time. Unless we are sociopaths, we have to believe, at certain points, that maybe we’ve gotten something big wrong. I also suspect that’s how we have evolved to learn and therefore survive. But if we are lucky, sometimes…