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I don't know where i saw the notice that you guys were putting together this program it was on one of
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the standard outlets maybe Wall Street Journal maybe Bloomberg but I read an article that you were putting together
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this forecasting tournament and that you were trying to find out what it is makes
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a good forecaster and I feel like I owe the system for so many years I've been
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doing research and I've relied on other people to contribute to that research
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and they have selflessly and so I'm a chronic volunteer as well when somebody
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says I need your help to do my research I volunteer for instance the new york blood center contacted me and said
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you're not allowed to give blood but we've got this research program and
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blood donation will you come in and donate a pint of blood every month so we can see what happens so I did that just
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to pay back the system so i'm paying back the system by being in the good judgment project
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I think that I make connections for instance I couldn't figure out why Putin
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was in Syria none of the explanations that people gave the talking heads made any sense to me Syria does not a join
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Russia the Ukraine does Syria is of no strategic importance to Putin why is he in Syria there was just no reason all of
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this business about how he couldn't let one of his henchmen down or else all the
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other henchmen would feel insecure just didn't buy that I wanted to make sense
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of that and all of a sudden I remembered something and that is that Putin is building up the bread Russian fleet in
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the Mediterranean but they don't have a home port in the Mediterranean so they
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have to go all the way back to Russia and the Black Sea to get a home port well where is Putin landing his troops
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next to the port of Latakia which is a major port on the Mediterranean so perhaps what Putin wants is a deal with
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Assad for a 50-year lease on the port of Latakia now that to me makes sense that
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would explain why Putin is in Syria it accomplishes a strategic thing for him it gives him a port for his
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Mediterranean fleet so I think that's probably part of the reason why I was successful I feel uncomfortable saying
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successful because I don't feel successful you tell me I was successful I don't feel successful it I that's part
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of the modus operandi that I go through is I I see disparate things and I try to
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make sense of them for instance another thing when the third Kim took over North
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Korea all of a sudden there was a huge round of executions including his own uncle he blew his uncle up with it
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aircraft anti-aircraft gun things were then fairly quiet and then another big round of executions I couldn't figure
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out why he was executing all these people I contacted somebody who was an expert
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in North Korean relations and I said while the executions he said well they've been more than you know they
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just not publicized have been to big rounds I thought what's going on here and then I saw something that said Kim
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has not yet traveled outside of North Korea not even to Beijing to visit his sponsors we don't know when Kim's going
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to travel outside of North Korea all of a sudden you put the two together perhaps the guys afraid that if he
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leaves the country he won't be able to come back that there'll be a coup in his
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absence and he's taking care of everybody who might be involved in such a coup and in fact he's now due to go to
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Moscow I think in december so again trying to make sense out of something just looking around at where how things
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might fit together to make things make more sense than they would otherwise 30 years ago a good friend of mine also
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named Barbara Barbara McClintock advised me over and over in our conversations that I should always questioned my
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fundamental assumptions my underlying assumptions and I think that's something
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that's been very important to me was Barbara's advice for instance a spacecraft just flew past jupiter and
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took a whole bunch of high-resolution pictures of Jupiter I'm sorry Pluto and
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took a whole bunch of high-resolution pictures of Pluto and son of a gun this 4.5 billion year old planet is
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geologically active and everybody is absolutely floored the solar system is 4.5 billion years old the planets are
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not supposed to be geologically active when they're the size of Pluto why is
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this so everybody's trying to figure out why 4.5 billion year old Pluto is by
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geologically active they're talking about more missions to Pluto have hundred-million-dollar missions
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half-billion-dollar missions I'm certain that there are all sorts of young planetary scientists who are trying to
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figure out how they can start their careers by figuring out and making a name for themselves wipe loot Pluto is
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geologically active well what's the underlying assumption here the underlying assumption is that Pluto's
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4.5 billion years old what happens if Pluto isn't 4.5 billion years old what
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happens with Pluto is a good deal younger then in fact you expect it to be geologically active and there's no
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inconsistency here at all the inconsistency is that your fundamental assumption that Pluto is 4.5 billion
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years old was incorrect so I'd advise those young planetary scientists who are
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thinking about trying to explain how a 4.5 billion year old celestial body could be geologically active to question
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whether or not it's really 4.5 billion years old there's another something else
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that gets a lot more attention and that's it ran for the last four to five years the entire economy of the world
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has in an uproar because all of the major nations have slapped an embargo on dealing with Iran because Iran is trying
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to build a nuclear weapon and they had to negotiate long and hard with Iran to negotiate I ran away from a posture
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where they could be capable of building the nuclear weapon that they were trying
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to build and this brought us a lot closer to allies like Saudi Arabia to whom we perhaps should not be close and
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it's caused no end to trouble throughout the entire world particularly the Middle
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East which is troubled enough well what's the underlying assumption here that Iran wants to build a nuclear
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weapon they kept saying that they didn't want to build a nuclear weapon why didn't we believe them well we have x
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y&z reasons why we didn't believe them but again it's a fundamental assumption
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the entire foreign policy in the Middle East of nearly the entire world was dictated by the underlying assumption
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that Iran wanted to build a nuclear device I personally wouldn't want to build a nuclear device I can't see why
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Iran would want a nuclear device nuclear bombs are so 20th century we've moved on
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I happen to think Iran didn't particularly want to build a nuclear bomb but everybody's fundamental
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assumption was that it did and I would go out on a limb and I'd say that even
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in spite of all the acrimony that we've had over Iran that it's quite possible
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that in 20 years Iran will be our closest ally in the Middle East and the reason for that is that Iran is the
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largest Persian nation on earth the United States is the second-largest Persian nation on earth and Canada is
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the fourth-largest Persian nation on earth there's a natural affinity there and as soon as that embargo is lifted
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the Persians are not going to start doing deals with the British or the Chinese or the Russians they're going to
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do business with their Persian American friends so I see business between Iran Persia and the United States
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particularly the Persian community building very quickly I think that could lead to good political relations as well
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that would be a major casualty of misunderstanding Iran's intentions with nuclear weapons
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I recommend that when you come to a new field about which you know nothing that you browse the literature talk to people
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if you can attend lectures if you can and listen for the totem words the words which either consciously or
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unconsciously people in the field give special meeting and I find that if you can figure out what those totem words
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are and then go away and figure out what they mean you'll find out at least one
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of the things that's very important to people in the field that they don't say
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is important to them necessarily but they give it importance by continually using these totem words or continually
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emphasizing them for instance last week I went to grand rounds at our regional hospital and there was a cardiologist
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giving a talk and he was giving a talk on the pharmaceutical management of cardiac patients who had circulatory
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problems problems with blockages problems leakages he would go through a series of example patients this patient
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comes in with these symptoms what do you do we immediately stent this patient how
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do we drug this patient for the stent we're going to use this compound and we're going to use this compound but
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we're going to stay away from that compound because it can cause bleeding and we don't want bleeding now this
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patient has got a partially occluded artery and is in a lot of pain we're going to give this patient warfarin
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because we need to dissolve that clot and prevent it from growing however we're not going to give this patient
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these other two drugs because they can lead to bleeding even worse than warfarin can lead to bleeding we give
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combinations of these drugs because it reduces bleeding bleeding this bleeding that what I came away from not knowing
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really that very much about how to treat cardiac patients was that if we can generalize from just this one talk
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what's most important is to keep the patient from bleeding no matter what you do and so if I was given
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a new drug and asked to predict whether or not it was going to be a success the first thing I look at is whether it
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causes uncontrolled bleeding or not what the likelihood is how it can be combined
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with other things all from a standpoint of does it cause bleeding now that doesn't give you the answer to how that
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new drug is going to do but it gives you a lead into it so that you can then begin to understand how things are going
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on so I'd say look for the totem words when you're reading an article look for
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the words that the author of the article seems to come back to over and over and
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then start by figuring out what those words mean I've been very insecure all my life for
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a variety of reasons and I never really thought very much of my own opinions I always figured well is the world crazy
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or is it me in the answer was I must be crazy I think the good judgment project has shown me that occasionally I'm right
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and other people are wrong which is not something that I expected going in I expected to be wrong all the time and
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curiously and I've seen this in Phil's book and I've heard it from other people
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the things about which I was most wrong with the things I was supposed to know something about namely the medical
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questions so I think the good judgment project has given me a little bit of confidence in myself that I didn't have
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before I went into it you