The Folly of Prediction

Plus, the dangers of panicked elites.

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Dear Reader (Unless you receive this “news”letter through long protein strings),

I was in a hotel in Pendleton, Oregon, on 9/11. I was there because Cosmo the Wonderdog had attended my wedding and I’d had to pick him up, along with my car, from the San Juan Islands and drive back home after my honeymoon. Pendleton was my first stop. 

(Though, Cosmo was not in the actual wedding ceremony in any way. My then-soon-to-be mother-in-law said she would boycott the event if Cosmo was a ringbearer, never mind best man—even though he was the bestest boy.)

Jessica couldn’t come with me to pick up Cosmo, because she had to get back to her relatively new job as John Ashcroft’s chief speechwriter at DoJ.

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  1. Avatar photo
    JDW

    A great article Jonah. I think there is hysteria on all sides. I seem surrounded by it. It's enough to make one hysterical about the hysteria. :-).

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  2. Joe1776

    "They honestly think—or claim to honestly think—it’s insane that anyone would believe that a Putin sycophant who publicly asked the Russians to hack his opponent, appointed Paul Manafort his campaign manager (currently in jail, in part for working illegally with Russians), and whose campaign met with a Russian emissary to collect dirt on his opponent would ever—ever!—work with the Russians. "

    Few would deny they would work with Russians. Clearly Hillary would work with Russians as well. That is not illegal nor should it be.

    "Manafort served as an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort

    I think you misrepresent those who find the conduct of the FBI and media outrageous.

    The reason their conduct was so outrageous is because there was never any credible evidence Trump committed a crime. Yet they continued that conspiracy theory for years and used our federal police to investigate his campaign. Once you are ok with our fbi investigating a campaign when there is no evidence of a crime, and leaking dirt to the press I think you have lost all objectivity.

    There is nothing illegal about creating the dossier or asking for dirt from foreigners. Republicans recognize that. The left wants to claim it is illegal but at the same time refuse to acknowledge Hillary and the democratic party did exactly that or that it was somehow fine when they do it.

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  3. rorban

    Jonah, what say you about Hilary Clinton's August 25 statement that Joe Biden should not concede the 2020 presidential election “under any circumstances"?

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  4. Avatar photo
    Ignatius J. Reilly

    In the past I have always shared Jonah's belief that things will generally be OK, in spite of hysteria on the right or left. I am uncharacteristically worried now and am considering moving to the Netherlands where my wife was born (I currently live in DC, so real political unrest would be more troubling than say, the middle of Pennsylvania). I see two worrying dynamics: (1) the unrest and anger over an uncertain election result that neither side seems to be attempting to tamp down ahead of time that enables some geopolitical move by an adversary such as China's invasion of Taiwan; (2) the unrest and anger that would result from the Democratic party carrying out its threat to expand the Supreme Court and induct states into the Union if they capture the Senate and the Presidency. The collapse of the filibuster will be the most destabilizing voluntary move by a political party in over a hundred years. It would tell half the country to stuff it without compromise. This would not be good for what's left of amicable debate. Serious unrest could follow, I don't see how one side will sit on its hands in peace while the entire structure of the economy and current interpretations of the Constitution are set on fire.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    Hi Jonah. While scritching the doggos, I'd encourage you to read Michael Lewis' "The undoing project". While the topic sounds like where you'd prefer the doggos to chew off a limb rather than read it, Lewis' gift of story telling makes it compelling tale.

    Amos Tversky talked about how historians look for patterns in data that are not there, so they in effect do a horrible job of predicting the past. They do worse predicting the future.

    None of 2020 was really predictable; oh, wildifres burn pretty regularly, and hurricanes hit as well, but the rest of it, just random noise. just random noise.

    Don't beleive me? Go back to January 2017 and ask how likely it was that two ME countries would normalize relationships with Israel. 4 country's have done in in 70+ years, two of them in 2020. I guarantee you more people thought murder hornets and meth gators in 2020 were more likely than UAE and Bahrain sitting down with Israel.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Bill Nelson

    Have to comment on the British during WWII. Churchill, as elite as one can get, was quite good at keeping the people informed that there would be bad days, and toned down the triumphalism. I believe that it was after El Alamein that he said “This is not the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning.”
    The man’s best quotes were things he never said.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Bill Nelson

    Never heard of Michael Anton, wish I could say that about Giuliani.
    There’s money in panic. We repeatedly hear of the dangers of white supremists are right wing militias (refer to the Southern Poverty Law Group) or Antifa, who can break windows, but not a danger to take over the country.
    And just how does Trump not accept the election results? I bet that the doors on the White House don’t even have locks. If he stays in the White House the janitors will just clean around him.
    But I have one question: how does one get to be an “elite”? I’ve given up trying.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Dina

    So great to have the G-File back!

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  9. Avatar photo
    Adam Bridge

    I now have no idea of who an "elite" is. It's a term you toss around without definition. Is it wealth? Having a job? Having a college education? A post-graduate degree? No idea. It's a useless term that can mean whatever prejudicial meaning the reader desires.

    You really can do better.

    That said I take your meaning. As a culture we're stressed. Greatly stressed. Times are changing incredibly fast. I came of age in the late 60s - those were pretty rough times: there was a strong resistance to the war in Vietnam, there was extreme left wing violence that included bombings, kidnappings and substantial unrest. There was a lot of tension between generations. But with all of that going down our today feels much worse. There's an ongoing deep distrust in our institutions and a lack of faith that the norms that have glued together our government are being eroded and are no longer suitable to provide trust.

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