Sean, just a quick note from someone else in the prediction business: I think you're being too hard on yourself.
What's happened to the world in the last 14 months, and especially in the last 14 weeks, has absolutely no precedent in modern history. Trump is a truly "sui generis" figure -- the worst man at the worst time, a random explosion detonator at the heart of the most dangerously fragile and dynamic geopolitical ecosystem we've ever experienced. You simply can't account for something like this.
The American political system in which Trump defeated Harris in November 2024 holds little resemblance to the one we have now: a sycophantic Cabinet, a supine Congress, a degraded media, and a court system barely holding on. It all happened so fast that it's difficult to remember today that Trump's presidential campaign, ramshackle as it was, gave no real warning of what was to come. I doubt even Trump himself knew what he would unleash.
The only lesson that systems analysts can take here, I think, is that adaptability is our most critical skill. Stuff happens, and more illogical and ahistorical stuff is happening right now than the most sophisticated projection systems could have accounted for. What matters is not that something unexpected has occurred, but how quickly we can recognize it, accept it, and adjust to it. And your approach to geopolitical analysis is still valid and valuable in accomplishing those tasks.
Thanks Jordan - very much appreciate you weighing in. I definitely agree that there were few indications we'd land precisely where we did. In fact, all the analysts that warned of global meldown during Trump's first term were laughed out of the room along with those that warned of UK meltdown after Brexit as dire scenarios did not come to pass for the US or Uk at the time. So I think analysts were pretty chastened and warned of over warning. But I still think it's important to be transparent about what we get wrong and to reflect on it. I was trying to prove that point by writing this; it was equally about that analytical reflection as it was about the actual issue.
To be more charitable to myself, the book was not about Trump and he shows up barely, episodically, and only in passages I wrote under severe time pressure. If I wanted to explain why it "wasn't my fault" I got it wrong, I could construct that argument.
However, just as people post only their best lives on social media and never their failures, forecasters are really good at making it seem like they always have an edge. Often they get things wrong quietly. Often the things they get right are because they get lucky.
Sean, just a quick note from someone else in the prediction business: I think you're being too hard on yourself.
What's happened to the world in the last 14 months, and especially in the last 14 weeks, has absolutely no precedent in modern history. Trump is a truly "sui generis" figure -- the worst man at the worst time, a random explosion detonator at the heart of the most dangerously fragile and dynamic geopolitical ecosystem we've ever experienced. You simply can't account for something like this.
The American political system in which Trump defeated Harris in November 2024 holds little resemblance to the one we have now: a sycophantic Cabinet, a supine Congress, a degraded media, and a court system barely holding on. It all happened so fast that it's difficult to remember today that Trump's presidential campaign, ramshackle as it was, gave no real warning of what was to come. I doubt even Trump himself knew what he would unleash.
The only lesson that systems analysts can take here, I think, is that adaptability is our most critical skill. Stuff happens, and more illogical and ahistorical stuff is happening right now than the most sophisticated projection systems could have accounted for. What matters is not that something unexpected has occurred, but how quickly we can recognize it, accept it, and adjust to it. And your approach to geopolitical analysis is still valid and valuable in accomplishing those tasks.
Thanks Jordan - very much appreciate you weighing in. I definitely agree that there were few indications we'd land precisely where we did. In fact, all the analysts that warned of global meldown during Trump's first term were laughed out of the room along with those that warned of UK meltdown after Brexit as dire scenarios did not come to pass for the US or Uk at the time. So I think analysts were pretty chastened and warned of over warning. But I still think it's important to be transparent about what we get wrong and to reflect on it. I was trying to prove that point by writing this; it was equally about that analytical reflection as it was about the actual issue.
To be more charitable to myself, the book was not about Trump and he shows up barely, episodically, and only in passages I wrote under severe time pressure. If I wanted to explain why it "wasn't my fault" I got it wrong, I could construct that argument.
However, just as people post only their best lives on social media and never their failures, forecasters are really good at making it seem like they always have an edge. Often they get things wrong quietly. Often the things they get right are because they get lucky.
Gotta own the Ws and the Ls.
🫡