Notice When People Are Directionally Correct

post by Chris_Leong · 2024-01-14T14:12:37.090Z · LW · GW · 8 comments

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I started watching Peter Zeihan videos last year.

He shares a lot of interesting information, although he seems to have a very strong bias towards doom and gloom.

One thing in particular stood out to me as completely absurd: his claim that global trade is going to collapse due to piracy as the US pulls back from ensuring freedom of the waters.

My immediate thought: "Come on, mate, this isn't the 17th century! Pirates aren't a real issue these days. Technology has rendered them obsolete".

Given this, I was absolutely shocked when I heard that missile attacks by Houthi rebels had caused most of the largest shipping companies to decide to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and to sail around Africa instead.

This has recently triggered the US to form an alliance to maintain freedom of shipping there and the US recently performed airstrikes in retaliation. It won't surprise me if this whole issue is resolved relatively soon and if that happens, then the easy thing to do would be to go back to my original beliefs: "Silly me, I was worried for a second that Peter Zeihan might be correct, but that was just me falling for sensationalism. The whole incident was obviously never going to be anything. I should forget all about it".

I believe that this would be a mistake. It would be very easy to forget it, but something like the Houthi's being able to cause as much disruption as they have been able to was outside of my model. One option would be to label it as a freak incident; another would be to say that shooting missiles isn't exactly piracy so this doesn't count. However, the problem with this is that it's too easy. When there's ambiguity, humans have a strong tendency to make up excuses as to why they were right all along, so I think it's worthwhile pushing toward the other end of the spectrum and assuming that there probably were ways in which you could have done better.

I tried searching for possible ways that I should update and the following thoughts came to mind, which I'll convey because they are illustrative:

• I have heard a few people suggest in various contexts that many countries have been coasting and relying on the US for defense, but it was just floating around in my head as something that people say that might or might not be true. I haven't really delved into this, but I'm starting to suspect I should put more weight on this belief.
• I hadn't considered the possibility that a country with a weak navy might have a significant lead time on developing one that is stronger.
• I hadn't considered the possibility that pirates might be aligned with a larger proto-state actor, as opposed to being individual criminals.
• I hadn't considered the possibility that a non-state actor might be able to impede shipping and that other countries would have at least some reluctance to take action against that actor because of diplomatic considerations.
• I hadn't considered that some people in the West might support such an actor for political reasons.
• Even though I was aware of the Somalian pirate issues from years ago, I didn't properly take this into account. These pirates were easily defeated when nations got serious, which probably played a role in my predictions, but I needed to also update in relation to this ever having been an issue at all.
• Forgetting that contexts can dramatically change: events that once seemed impossible regularly happen.

My point is that there is a lot I can learn from this incident, even if it ends up being resolved quickly.

I suspect it's rare to ever really fully grasp all of the learnings from a particular incident (in contrast, I suspect most people just grab one learning from an incident and declare themselves to be finished having learned from it).

If you haven't made a large number of small updates, you've probably missed updates that you should have made.

(I just want to note that I love having the handle "directionally correct". It's so much easier to say that something like "I don't think X is correct on all points, but I think a lot of their points are correct". I would love to know where the rise in this term is coming from).

Further update: Iranian seizure of the MCS Aries

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