My predictive errors of 2020.
People who make predictions - particularly psychics, but media folks and people in any engaged in politics - always tout their hits, but most often fail to mention their misses. Honesty compels us to admit error, and not pretend we're more wise or far-seeing than we really are.
So here are my two biggest predictive errors of 2020.
- The Covid-19 pandemic was worse and killed more people than I thought it would. I was overly optimistic, because in general the media and folks like Neil Ferguson are overly pessimistic. They were wrong, too, so I don't feel at all bad about discounting them, but I quite clearly went too far in the opposite direction.
- Vaccines for Covid became available far faster than I imagined possible. I was overly pessimistic, because I did not know about the tremendous technological advances that enabled the creation of an effective vaccine in mere days. I can't say just how delighted I am to be wrong about that, not just because of Covid, but for what it means for cutting short future viral pandemics.