The Worst is Yet to Come...So is the Best
Prediction blindness revisited • One-eyed leadership in the land of the blind
On April 2, 2025, Donald Trump escalated America’s trade war with the rest of the world by announcing broad tariffs on imports from other countries. The U.S. stock market convulsed violently for an entire week, sending our portfolios on the world’s scariest rollercoaster ride. Our 401(k)s shrank into 201(k)s before recovering somewhat.
Meanwhile, our friends, families, and coworkers are engaging in the political pastime of self-righteous crystal ball gazing. To play this game, you start by separating yourself into one of two camps:
“We can’t believe this happened, but it’s okay because we’ll still win in the end.” Translation: My crystal ball failed to predict the future last time, but this time it’s different.
“We saw this coming from a mile away, and can’t believe the people in the first camp didn’t.” Translation: My crystal ball predicted the future once, and therefore I’m right and you’re stupid.
Then both sides scry their crystal balls again to make a prediction about America’s future. Camp #1 imagines a prosperous utopia where manufacturing jobs grow on trees. Camp #2 paints an apocalyptic future where the United States emulates the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
When those people ask us what we think will happen, our answer is always the same:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This post is not political commentary about current events. The news being published today may become irrelevant within a few months, but the lessons we glean from them are timeless.
Our Brains Crave Reasons, Not Truth
In Risk and Uncertainty in Leadership: 3-Dimensional Thinking, we made our case that the farther we get from “pure” sciences like math and physics, the worse our predictions become. By the time we get to the “soft sciences” like economics and political science, even Ivy League professors and Nobel laureates have no more predictive power than a dart-throwing monkey.
Yet, when faced with the Fog of Uncertainty and the Unknown Abyss, our first instinct is to concoct a narrative that sounds reasonable. By “reasonable,” we mean that the narrative only needs to make sense. It does not need to be true. Some of the narratives we’ve heard over the past month include:
Appeals to emotion (pathos): “the tariffs will keep the foreign products out, bring jobs back, and make America great again!” or “the tariffs will impoverish everyone, starve the children, and send the price of eggs into the stratosphere!1”
Appeals to authority (ethos): “professional economists from 20 prestigious universities said the tariffs will/will not cause a recession.” Even though these same economists’ forecasting records are on par with a coin flip. Remember early 2023 when 85% of economists predicted that a recession would hit the U.S. that year? When the recession never arrived, everyone started calling it a “soft landing” instead.
Appeals to logos (logos): “these charts/spreadsheets/models prove that tariffs will/will not destroy the economy.” Even though you can cherry-pick data and p-hack the statistics to support any preconceived notion.
Next time someone makes a prediction, pay attention to which mode of persuasion they use. Are they using the mode of persuasion that appeals to the listener, or the mode that appeals to themselves? If the latter, the speaker is deceiving themselves. They think they’re trying to convince the audience, but they’re mostly just entrenching their own beliefs.
Our Imaginations are Woefully Limited
There’s a scene in The Simpsons Movie (2007) where Bart Simpson is arrested for skateboarding through the city naked. He ends up handcuffed (still naked) to a lamppost for hours while the arresting officers go to lunch. When Homer Simpson finally shows up, the two have this exchange:
Bart Simpson: [mortified] This is the worst day of my life.
Homer Simpson: [blithely] The worst day of your life so far.
Homer’s tone-deaf response was perfectly suited to his characterization as a bumbling idiot. The joke was good for a short laugh back in 2007, but we remember it two decades later because it carries so much wisdom beneath the surface. Homer’s comment illustrates the prediction blindness that has plagued humanity since forever ago.
To illustrate, let’s look at the ancient Egyptians’ use of high water marks for planning purposes. The pharaonic Egyptians recorded a new high water mark whenever the Nile River’s floodwaters rose high enough to surpass the previous record. No one seemed to notice that the worst flood of all time is always the worst one so far; every “worst flood” was eventually trivialized by a new-worst flood.
Here are more recent examples of “this is the worst X in history” distracting us from “this is the worst X so far.”
The Great War
The global conflict from 1914-1918 was originally called the Great War or “the war to end all wars.” It was the worst war in history, unprecedented in its carnage…until 20 years later. Now we just call them World War I and World War II.
If our species survives World War III, maybe we’ll call the next-worst conflict the “Greatest War” or something similarly hyperbolic. Only in hindsight will we rechristen the conflict Intergalactic War I and Intergalactic War II.
The Great Depression
Did you know that the United States had a great depression before the Great Depression? The Panic of 1893 was called the “great depression” by those who experienced it because it was the worst economic downturn in American history at the time. Then a greater depression arose in the 1930s to claim the “Great Depression” title. The next time the world spirals into a greater depression, we will rename the Great Depression as the “Depression of the 1930s” or something equally uninspiring.
Bank stress testing
The Federal Reserve (central bank) of the United States routinely conducts “stress tests” on commercial banks. These stress tests are simulated disasters of varying magnitudes, with the “severely adverse” scenario mimicking post-war U.S. recessions. The Federal Reserve then reports on how well each bank would’ve endured adversity if history repeated itself.
Running stress tests are better than nothing at all, but the current system merely prepares banks to withstand the worst-case scenario so far. What happens when the Greater Depression hits?
The worst ___________ attack so far
The mainstream media has a penchant for turning mass murder into a morbid spectator sport. Perpetrators start out as nobodies, but then nationwide coverage turns them into instant celebrities. Their body counts are portrayed by the media like a high score – an invitation for other proto-terrorists to treat mass murder like an unlockable video game achievement. Is it any surprise that me-too copycat crimes proliferate after school shootings, vehicular rammings, and mass stabbings?
Similarly, the “worst terrorist attack in XYZ country’s history” is the worst one so far. Extensive news coverage is partly responsible for worsening terrorist attacks, but not in the way you might think. By spreading vivid images of the currently-worst attack, mainstream and social media distract us from future-worst attacks. The next “worst terrorist attack in history” will not cause 50% more casualties by crashing 50% more planes into 50% more skyscrapers; it will use a novel, unprecedented attack method that blindsides us while we’re busy invading the privacy of airport travelers.
A fate worse than death
Nassim Nicholas Taleb once played a prank conducted an experiment on 90 people at seminars by asking them “what’s the worst thing that can happen to you?” 88 people answered with “my death.”
He then asked those 88 people, “Is your death plus the death of your children, friends, family, and pets worse than just your death?” All 88 said yes. Taleb continued: “Is your death plus your children, friends, family, pets plus the extinction of all humanity worse than just your death?” Again, all 88 said yes. Clearly, your death isn’t the worst possible outcome! Imagine your death plus the survival of someone you loathe – wouldn’t that be worse than just your death?
This inability to see past one’s own demise is much like the inability to see the worst calamity as the worst one so far. You can reproduce Taleb’s findings by playing this prank experimenting on people at your next social gathering. It’s a brutally efficient way of turning conferences, weddings, and birthday parties into fun-free zones!
The Best is Yet to Come…
Remember that doom and gloom is only half of what’s hidden within the Fog of Uncertainty. The Fog indiscriminately hides both pleasant and unpleasant surprises. If the worst is yet to come, then the best is also yet to come! The glass is both half full and half empty.2
For most people, “this is the best X of my life so far” comes more naturally than “this is the worst X of my life so far.” It’s easier to imagine (and anticipate) your next pay raise, promotion, or vacation than it is to imagine (and dread) the next “worst setback so far.” You expect that the next iPhone will be sexier and have a better camera than the one in your pocket. You expect the next model-year automobile will have more bells and whistles than the one parked in your garage.
That said, the above examples of “best X of my life so far” are easy to imagine because they’re incremental improvements; they’re part of an ongoing and semi-predictable trend. We’re just as blind to revolutionary improvements as we are to revolutionary setbacks (AKA disasters).
…but we’re bad at predicting that, too
The best is yet to come, but we can’t predict it or plan for it. To use concrete examples that everyone would understand, let’s stick with technology3. When we imagine what cool new gadgets we’ll have 50 years from now, we mostly think in terms of:
Incremental improvements to existing technology (e.g. augmented-reality glasses, like Google Glass without the suck)
Purely speculative sci-fi tropes (e.g. Star Wars’ holograms or Star Trek’s Holodeck).
These technologies are conceivable, but we don’t know which ones will become widely popular, or when. Remember back in the 2010s when everyone was convinced that self-driving vehicles will make truck drivers and Uber obsolete by 2020?
We can’t predict how new technology will be used, either. In 1949, when George Orwell imagined the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the citizens of Oceania lived under the oppression of telescreens: two-way video devices used for propaganda and surveillance. Orwell got the technology correct, but the timing and usage way wrong. He never imagined that telescreens in 2025 would be called “smartphones”: two-way video devices used for propaganda, ads, and tracking our location, biometrics, and habits.
And what about the technology that currently lies beyond our imagination? The technology of 2075 could be buried more deeply than Cerebrium in the Secret Grottos. The tech of 2075 could be Inconceivabilia in the Unknown Abyss – so novel that we can’t even imagine it. So advanced that it’s indistinguishable from black magic.
Imagine showing an iPhone to someone in 1975, when color television was rolling out across the world. Or imagine showing a 1975-era color television set to someone in 1925, when radio broadcasting was still new. That’s how mind-blowing the Inconceivabilia of 2075 would be if we could see it today.
Should we predict the good stuff yet to come?
There’s no wrong answer to this question, but here’s how we think about it: planning to fall in love is very different from unexpectedly falling in love during a chance encounter. A functional crystal ball would rob us of happy accidents; we’d never be pleasantly surprised ever again!
Being a sucker for calamity (like a Thanksgiving turkey) is a recipe for misery. We’d argue that the opposite – being a sucker for serendipity – is something that makes life worth living.
Practicing One-Eyed Leadership in the Land of Prediction Blindness
When the pharaonic Egyptians notched a new high water mark every time the Nile River’s floodwaters surpassed the previous record, they were practicing what we presently call “science-based” or “evidence-based” decision making. This type of decision-making is much better than reading signs from the entrails of sacrificial animals, but the quality of your decision is only as good as the data you have.
When it comes to preparing for disasters, evidence-based decision making can only prepare you for history repeating itself. Past evidence won’t prepare you when a historic event unfolds before your eyes.
When it comes to capitalizing on serendipity, evidence-based decision making will prevent you from making revolutionary improvements. If no one has ever gone from zero to one, there is no precedent – no evidence – on which you can base a decision. Focusing on evidence-based decision making necessarily means going from one to n…and you’re probably going to make incremental improvements, not revolutionary ones.
Hope for the best…
If your job description involves “science-based” or “evidence-based” decision making, your duties probably involve a caretaker role (e.g. government) or an iterative approach to refining something that already works (e.g. most research these days). The work might be important to your organization’s mission, but you’ll probably feel pressured to embellish your work as “innovative” or “original.” How many “novel” ways are there to make a government transfer payment?!
To make revolutionary improvements, you have to screw around a lot and hire a bunch of weirdos. Preferably the weirdos who are curious, playful, independent-minded, and unafraid of looking stupid…not the weirdos who moonlight as axe murderers. This cat-herding job is not for the faint of heart.
Prepare for the worst…
Next time you’re standing silently in an elevator with strangers, look for the elevator’s capacity sign. Let’s say your elevator’s capacity is 3,500 pounds (1588 kg). What happens when you squeeze 14 Americans into the elevator, reaching the weight capacity? Does the cable snap, sending you and your 14 unlucky passengers plummeting down, down, down until you reach China?
No! The elevator has a factor of safety built into it, as do bridges and buildings. If a bridge has a stated capacity of, say, 15 trucks, the bridge can tolerate more (it can probably handle 20 trucks loaded with overweight Texans). The factor of safety doesn’t just prepare for you for the “worst X so far”, it even prepares you for worst-er disasters!
Why don’t more leaders build in factors of safety when preparing for disasters?
Our imaginations are woefully limited, as we mentioned earlier in the article.
It’s expensive.
There’s no glory in preventing the worst disaster in history.
Point #3 deserves special consideration. No one gets promoted by putting “no disasters happened on my watch” on their résumé. In fact, they might get blamed for wasting money that could’ve been better spent elsewhere (see point #2).
As we lamented in Preventing Career Failure (Explained with 2nd-Grade Math) and The Dangers of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), prevention is a thankless job. If you do your job well, you’re invisible. No one will ever hear about the 10,000 disasters you prevented, but everyone will excoriate you for the one disaster that slipped through. As a species, we are awfully ungrateful toward the heroes who quietly prevent disasters. We only praise the ones who ride in to deliver us from a disaster in progress.
If you’re one of the leaders building factors of safety into your preparations, we salute you.
…And Capitalize on What Follows
This article was not a commentary about American politics in 2025. We’re using current events as a backdrop to comment on flaws in the human condition: our blindness to the future, and our blindness to our blindness. Our crystal balls are unfixably opaque, but we feel compelled to make predictions anyway.
We have no idea if we’re heading into a Greater Depression, or if the past month’s developments will lead to revolutionary improvements in American prosperity. Fortunately, predicting the future isn’t necessary if we use Nassim Taleb’s trifecta of fragility, robustness, and anti-fragility. By moving from fragility to robustness, we can “win” by losing less than competitors. By moving past robustness into anti-fragility, we actually benefit because of volatility and disorder, not merely despite them.
If there’s one thing that the people from Camp #1 and Camp #2 can agree on, it’s that we’re living through turbulent times. If you’re positioned to benefit from turbulence, you’ll emerge from the ordeal better than you were before.
In case anyone is reading this years later, there was an outbreak of avian influenza subtype H5N1 in 2024-2025. Millions of chickens were culled, leading to a shortage of eggs and a spike in egg prices.
We’ve never liked the half-full/half-empty metaphor for optimism/pessimism. What if the cup contains anthrax? We’ll take the half-empty cup, thank you very much.
A better future can’t be built solely on physical technology. We’re focusing on technology because it’s less abstract than a better future built on better legal systems or improved social norms.