Evaluate Your Experts

We all have experts
we tend to trust
to give us accurate information.
We base our decisions
in business
and other aspects of life
on the things
they tell us.

At least once a year,
I evaluate these experts.
I look at their predictions
and I compare those predictions
to what actually happened.

There are health experts,
for example,
who predict
every COVID wave
will be the last one.

They’ve been wrong
again and again.

I no longer
rely on them
for information.

Evaluate your experts.
If they have always
been wrong,
assume they will be wrong
again.

Find better experts.

Predicting The Future

When I was young,
I would read my horoscope
every day.
And every day,
it would usually come true.

Because horoscopes contain
universal truths
and general predictions.
We then look for results
that will prove the predictions to be true.

“Don’t believe everything you hear today.”
You shouldn’t believe everything you hear
on ANY day.

“You will have good luck today.”
Every day we’re alive
is a fortunate day.

As Seth Godin
shares

“Voices that purport
to know the future
–whether they are psychics, astrologers,
family or the noise in our head–
are pretty effective
when it’s vague enough,
but terrible
when it comes to specifics.
That’s because when it’s vague,
we complete the story on our own,
creating our own fact patterns
after things happen.”

Scientists knew, for example, there would be
another pandemic.
They were certain about that vague prediction.

They didn’t know it would happen
in 2019.
They couldn’t predict
that specific detail.

Remember that when listening to
predictions for that future.
The more specific the prediction is,
the less likely it is
to come true.