August 15, 2023 “Barbie was everything we didn’t want to be . . . everything the feminist movement was trying to escape.” – Gloria Steinem on Barbie (the doll) I’ve had a week or two to digest the two giant moviegoing experiences of the summer, and it occurs to me…
Popular Culture
“Oppenheimer” and the Real Miracle of the Nuclear Age
July 31, 2023 The Christopher Nolan film “Oppenheimer” is all over the headlines this summer (along with the film “Barbie,” directed by Greta Gerwig). Having just watched it, as a professional scenario planner and “futurist” (whatever that might mean), I have thoughts. The main thought is my amazement that we…
Algorithms
Hate to Say We Told You So…
[Reposted with permission from the Futures Strategy Group website… a blog column that contains the germ of Fatal Certainty. https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategy/scenarios/ ] November 16, 2016 A week ago, something happened that no one was prepared for – and I mean NO ONE. Donald Trump was elected president. When I say “no one,” I include…
Algorithms
The Horserace Begins: Episode 1
The polling follies that will halt serious thought about the 2024 election have already begun August 2, 2023 In 2016, I wrote a couple of blog posts about the pernicious impact of polling on the functioning of American democracy. One (“Hate to Say We Told You So…”) is re-posted on this…
Fatal Certainty - Excerpts
How Will the War in Ukraine Turn Out?
No One Knows, So We’d Better Start Imagining July 26, 2023 Some 2500 years ago, a ruler of a great kingdom, Croesus of Lydia, saw a threat to his regime arising on his border. A new leader, Cyrus, had already created an empire that dwarfed Lydia, the Achaemenid Persian empire. Croesus,…
Algorithms
The Economics Profession: Still Mostly in Thrall to the Cult of Prediction (with honorable exceptions)
July 25, 2023 A week or so ago, the economist Paul Krugman put out a subscribers-only opinion piece entitled “Camps of economists fought grand theoretical battles, and all lost.” To his credit, he numbers himself among those who “lost” in these battles, which were over the likelihood of serious inflation…
Algorithms
“The Data Delusion” vs. Rigorous Imagination
July 20, 2023 Jill LePore is a Harvard historian whose wide-ranging scholarship has embraced the broad sweep of American history (These Truths), Native American-colonial conflict (The Name of War), superheroes (The Secret History of Wonder Woman), and even the Beatles (introduction to Paul McCartney’s 1964: Eyes of the Storm). In her…