Philip Tetlock, author of the book Expert Political Judgment, gave a talk a couple of weeks ago for the Long Now Foundation’s Seminars about Long-Term Thinking. I listened to the podcast. Tetlock has been collecting expert’s judgements for a couple of decades in order to evaluate what makes it possible for people to make good predictions.
Hmm. My recollection from the talk was that he said that one study group (at Exxon/Mobile?) had done a bunch of scenarios, and identified the rise of Gorbachev as an early indicator that liberalization was coming. That sounds prescient to me, but I find it plausible that Soviet watchers of the day could have figured it out. I'd guess Tetlock wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't verifiable from some public record somewhere.
Hmm. My recollection from the talk was that he said that one study group (at Exxon/Mobile?) had done a bunch of scenarios, and identified the rise of Gorbachev as an early indicator that liberalization was coming. That sounds prescient to me, but I find it plausible that Soviet watchers of the day could have figured it out. I'd guess Tetlock wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't verifiable from some public record somewhere.
What's funny is that he assumes that Gorbachev was going to liberalize the Soviet Union irrespective of what Reagan was doing...but that's an aside
Another person that I think would interest people reading this blog.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEBen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassi...
edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/t...
He is especial good at finacial skepticism and people who make finacial prediction.