Scenario Planning and Probabilistic Forecasting

In the Nov/Dec 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, J. Peter Scoblic & Phil Tetlock share insights in their essay "A Better Crystal Ball: The Right Way to Think About the Future". BLUF:

• Scenario Planning and Probabilistic Forecasting are key, and they must be combined to "... provide policymakers with both a range of conceivable futures and regular updates as to which one is likely to emerge ..."
  • Scenario Planning needs to be made structured and rigorous by "... identifying key uncertainties and then imagining how different combinations could yield situations that are vastly different from what mere extrapolation of the present would suggest" – so that the results are not predictive, but rather "... provocative, challenging planners' assumptions, shaking up their mental models of how the world works, and giving them the cognitive flexibility to better sense, shape, and adapt to the emerging future ..."
  • Probabilistic Forecasting needs to be made structured and avoid cognitive fallacies by taking "... people who [are] naturally numerate and open-minded, train[ing] them to think probabilistically and avoid common biases, and then group[ing] them so they [can] leverage the 'wisdom of the crowd' ..." – and then analyzing key questions by "... decomposing them into parts, researching the past frequency of similar (if not precisely analogous) events, adjusting the odds based the uniqueness of the situation, and continually updating their estimates as new information emerge[s] ..."
• The best unified approach is via "... developing clusters of questions that give early, forecastable indications of which envisioned future is likely to emerge, thus allowing policymakers to place smarter bets sooner ..."

In other words, use observables to define indicators, and apply good systems thinking to build mental models of the future!

(cf Fifth Disciplinarians (2000-09-10), Forecasting Lessons from Systems Dynamics (2017-07-05), Superpowers - Systems Thinking, Asking, and Listening (2019-01-29), Dancing with Systems (2019-06-21), Systems Thinking Icebergs (2019-06-27), Mantra - Be More Meta (2020-01-02), ...) - ^z - 2020-12-10