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that goes back to when I was a younger man during the first Gulf War in 1991 uh I was I'm interested in the military
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military history and a lot of people and pundits were making predictions about the outcome the manner in which the war
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would be waged and decided as well as casualty counts and how long it would take and basically everyone was wrong on
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the duration and the and the destructiveness well the number of casualties suffered by coalition forces
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and that was interesting to me because there was one historian I'd like to say
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Trevor Dupree you got it right and I was interested in and how he got it right like and evidently he had a system in
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just a few years later during the nineteen ninety-four midterm elections when Bill Clinton lost in a landslide to
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the Republicans the Republicans took the Congress for the first time in 40 years
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after that defeat basically every pundit on earth was saying that Bill Clinton is
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a one-term president and being a staunch Democrat in a Clinton supporter I was traumatized by that possibility and
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wondered whether they knew they whether they knew what they were talking about and at about that time I found a book
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written by another historian Alan Jay Lippman um about predicting you know who would become the next president and
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evidently he had a system where you didn't need to use poles you just look at history and using his method I
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realized that actually Bill Clinton was in a pretty good shape his his chances weren't guaranteed but you know even a
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year before the election um I had a pretty good inkling that he had a good chance of winning re-election and this
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was against what all the pundits were saying so based on those two events there were probably other events as well
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that's why I became interested in forecasting basically the fact that everyone you know got thing big thing
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was wrong and I want to know why and some people got big things right and I wanted to know why and whether I could
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do as well as I could so ever since then I was I started you know I'm my own
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forecasting you know the outcomes of wars and elections and with mixed results but you know so but over 20
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years so so that's how that's how I became interested I don't trust my gut so usually my first
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impression is right about half the time so in order to do well in a forecasting tournament you have to dig deeper into
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the sources if you're predicting elections for example you know I'm find
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out you know what happened in the past you know which parties were likely to win and under what circumstances do your
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research about the electoral system sometimes you know the electoral system could lead to a counterintuitive result
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you know a party could do very well in the polls and still lose the election so it's just really a matter of doing your
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homework trying to understand the situation the history behind the event and and really working hard at it and I
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would say a second reason would be mmm my sense of history so I think that comes in very handy because most people
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when they would forecast whatever event it is would really look to the recent past draw on their own memories as well
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as maybe you know Google search of of you know the recent news events but I think having a sense of history that
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stretches back far arm can give one a sense of em possibilities which you know the recent past might not indicate
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okay well along with not trusting my own gut feelings my first impressions I don't trust the gut feelings and of
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experts and pundits I try to when ever possible to discover understand what assumptions underlie their forecasts
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sometimes they're explicit about this and other times they aren't they don't
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really they'll say you know this event is likely but not really explain and if
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I keep doing my research and find other pundits you say a certain event is likely without you know much explanation
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at all then that's a signal for me to really do some deep research and and try
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to even if I agree with that assumption you know sometimes I'll just try to play
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the devil's advocate and say well let's pretend that this silly outcome that's
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unlikely to happen you know actually could happen and kind of play that out and sometimes you know I'll go back to
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my original estimate yeah that's silly it's not going to happen but you know
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often is the case that the silly outcome is becomes the more likely one so that's
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that's one thing I do and others I try to discover or to find out you know who
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has the power in a certain situation who who is the decider in the words of george w bush and that's one that keeps
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coming back all the time and also you know in every forecast you want to write down a list or in your head you know of
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all the constraints that would pretend prevent a certain event from occurring or slow it down you know make an event
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you know an a likely event take longer to occur then you know what was expected before so they're just a few things
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well one of the things i would recommend would be to write down a list of all the
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things that would that you should be on the lookout for that might cause you to change your mind so after you've done
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your homework you thought deeply about you know the event and the likelihood of of it occurring write down a list of of
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things that you know would happen leading up to the event or signals markers whatever that would cause you to
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change your mind and I'm the reason why I say write it down is because it's
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because you know it's very hard to change your mind and if you write it down it might be helped you you know not
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try to to fudge things well you know if it's if it's just in the back of your
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head you know mm it becomes a little bit more difficult to to go against you know
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your original original conclusion because I mean you put a lot of work into this and you don't want to go back
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on it and if there's a natural tendency not to want to you know waffle or be too
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wishy-washy but you know having it down on paper will just show you well I'm not
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being wishy-washy you know events have changed things have changed and maybe my initial conclusion was wrong I would say
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the third thing would be to play devil's advocate after immediately after you've
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you know come to a conclusion and made a forecast seek out information that would
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prove you wrong you know if anything you know just to cover all your bases I'd
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say my fourth piece of advice would be to seek a wide variety of sources even weak and biased sources because
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sometimes you can find interest in information in very flawed sources but that'll take some work on your part to
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determine you know which part of these you know particular reports are worth you know
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holding on to and which part should be discarded it's not an easy task but don't just you know casually disregard
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even even bad sources because you never know from four years as a as a forecaster in the gjp tournament I can
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say that another piece of advice I would give is to assume that things would take
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longer than your initial impression that's a rule of thumb because it happens consistently time and time again
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that whatever it is a diplomatic initiative or or or what have you events often will take a lot longer than then
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what what you think you know they will take or what officials you know the timetable of officials and and and
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that's just been my experience from doing this for a long time final piece of advice would be a embrace uncertainty
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don't get too hung up on getting things correct you're never going to get
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everything correct you're going to get a lot of things wrong I would focus more
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on assigning viable or realistic probabilities to events just think of it in terms of you know if I assignment
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seventy percent probability to a particular event you know I'm going to be wrong three out of ten times you know
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for so if you if you work on being well calibrated instead of trying to get everything right I think that's probably
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a more fruitful endeavor I'm not sure that they have all they probably should having practice at
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forecasting geopolitical events maybe I should start practicing forecasting events related to my own personal life
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maybe that would help me avoid being unpleasantly surprised by my things but so I'm not really sure how it's affected
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my personal life other than having nice dinner time conversations with families and friends
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you