October 5, 2023 To me, a great general idea is one that can be approached from many different directions, and it will still explain important phenomena. One where, after hearing about it, for some period of time afterwards, everywhere you look, you seem to see an example of it in…
Category: The Cult of Prediction
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…
Algorithms
Games Beyond Edges?
September 15, 2023 Bruce Schoenfeld’s Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports traces the impact of numerical analysis on sports, from the Moneyball days of the 1990s Oakland Athletics; through the 2000s curse-breaking Boston Red Sox; to Liverpool Football Club’s use of predictive analysis; to the NBA Golden…
Intersubjective Realities
Red vs. Blue vs…. Green?
September 11, 2023 It’s football season again, and many of us (not me) are participating in fantasy football betting groups. In its own little way, this is a symptom of what I like to call “the Cult of Prediction.” It used to be that only “nerds” participated in “rotisserie leagues”…
Algorithms
A Case Study in the Cult of Prediction: China, 2023
August 24, 2023 All predictive systems involve a network of “if-then” statements, assumptions about the interrelationships between certain past or present, presumably knowable, realities, and the future outcomes that can safely be assumed once those inputs are entered into the model. The “model” can be a computer-based algorithm, or mathematical…
The Cult of Prediction
Why Does the Cult of Prediction Matter?
August 22, 2023 In my previous blog post, I explained what the Cult of Prediction is. But why am I so hard on it? I don’t question the sincerity or intelligence of those who have helped to make the C. of P. more and more popular. Nate Silver, Cass Sunstein,…
The Cult of Prediction
What Is the Cult of Prediction?
August 21, 2023 Imagine a two-by-two matrix containing all major issues regarding the future. (That’s what most people think we consultants do, anyway. Two-by-two matrices.) On the vertical axis, you have predictability, ranging from low to high as you move up the page. On the horizontal axis, you have the…
Forecasting
Fox vs. Hedgehog
August 16, 2023 Πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog one great thing.” – Fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus, c. 680-645 B.C.E. I am a hedgehog. And I’m supposed to be a fox. Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the…
Forecasting
Introduction: Fatal Certainty
Fatal Certainty: The Cult of Prediction and the Need for a New Way to Deal with Fundamental Future Uncertainty Since ancient times, human beings have craved certainty. Two and a half millennia ago, rulers facing life-and-death decisions sought guidance from prophets and oracles; closer to our own time, astrologers such…
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…