What if you could make one minor update to your thought processes, using one quick trick? You can.
When you watch the news, what do you see? It’s all “analysis.” No one asks these people a simple question: You said Hillary Clinton would be President. Why do you know so much now?
This article isn’t political, by the way. That example is to illustrate the simple trick.
“Prioritize predictions over explanations.”
Anyone with an IQ about 115 can come up with after-the-fact rationalizations and explanations for world events.
Who is making concrete, up-or-down predictions?
If you think this rule is obvious, consider that the following person has a “Nobel prize,” and is cited as an expert on economic and world affairs:
– “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? – Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
Paul Krugman made a prediction about Trump’s effect on the stock market, and he was disastrously wrong. See, The Dow’s 31% gain during Trump’s first year is the best since FDR.
And of course every pundit on TV today “explaining” the latest development said Hillary Clinton would win.
If they were wrong then, why are they correct now?
The fact is 90% of your peers will never follow this rule. They forget incorrect predictions and chase the right answers today.
And in your own life, prioritize predictions over explanations.
It’s how you start to see into the future.
I think this ties into Buffet’s (I think it was him) idea of building a mental world model and constantly be checking it against your predictions.