A new book is out by the journalist Tom Chivers, author of The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy and How to Read Numbers. The Wall Street Journal likes it. Kirkus Reviews calls it “An ingenious introduction to the mathematics of rational thinking.” Oliver Burkeman wrote, “Life is shot through with uncertainty, but in this fascinating,…
Category: Forecasting
Economics
Robert Rubin’s Russian Roulette: “The Yellow Pad: Making Better Decisions in an Uncertain World”
February 5, 2024 The ignorance of even the best-informed investor about the more remote future is much greater than his knowledge, and he cannot but be influenced to a degree which would seem wildly disproportionate to anyone who really knew the future, and be forced to seek a clue mainly…
Forecasting
The Economist Succumbs to the Cult of Prediction…Again
The Economist’s annual preview of the coming year once again includes predictions. And that is a problem. To show you why it was a problem for 2023, let me share some slides I presented recently to the Intelligence Leadership Forum. The tl;dr version: Things that can be predicted with certainty are almost never strategic;…
Forecasting
Even Some “Scientific” Stuff Requires Alternative Scenarios: El Niño Edition
Every day brings more proof that the range of strategically critical phenomena that are utterly unable to be predicted is almost as vast as it was in the day of Brian Rua U’Cearbhain or the Oracle of Delphi. Today, the Washington Post shows us that even when the vast majority…
Forecasting
Horserace Episode 3.5: Pundit Whiplash/Pigheadedness Edition
November 9, 2023Yesterday, Democrats nearly swept the table in an off-year election, easily passing a referendum in red-state Ohio enshrining the right to abortion, easily re-electing a Democratic governor in Kentucky, and sweeping into the majority in both houses of the Virginia legislature. None of these things were predictable; all…
Forecasting
Horserace Episode 3: Forecasting Follies
November 7, 2023 Nate Silver, the other day, tweeted (or “Xed?”) that the Democratic Party should be very very worried. “You have the whole electorate basically screaming ‘BIDEN’S TOO OLD.’ There’s a year’s worth of campaign to go, very likely some reversion to the fundamentals, Trump’s legal issues probably a larger liability…
Fatal Certainty - Excerpts
Believe It…or Not?
October 22, 2023 The Washington Post has an article today about Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who is now awaiting trial on charges of fraud. It starts with the following paragraph: ‘As Sam Bankman-Fried (popularly known as SBF) gets ready to take the stand in his own trial, some fundamental questions remain unanswered. Did…
Algorithms
The Uses of Sortilege
October 2, 2023 Another avenue into the big truth expressed by Fatal Certainty: How a Cult of Prediction Made the Twenty-First Century an Era of Strategic Shock – and How Rigorous Imagination Could Bring Us Back comes from ancient approaches to dealing with fundamental, irreducible uncertainty. Decisions need to be made. This…
Forecasting
Why Conspiracy Theories Are (Almost) Always Wrong
September 29, 2023 I have a surefire method of determining when I have a great idea. It’s when I find it shedding light on all sorts of unexpected phenomena. Today the phenomenon in question is conspiracy theories, and why they are (almost) always wrong. (I add the parenthesis merely to…
Algorithms
Fatal Certainty: The Premise
September 20, 2023 Someone just asked me what the premise of my book was, what readers would take away from it. So I typed this up. My premise is that a cult of prediction has turned the 21st century into a series of avoidable shocks – 9/11, the failure of…