NonProphets

NonProphets


Ep. 69: Marc Koehler interview

January 11, 2019

Episode 69 of the NonProphets podcast, Atief, Robert, and Scott talk to Marc Koehler. Marc is the Vice President of Good Judgment Inc., in charge of government relations and co-head of analytics as well as an accomplished superforecaster. He was simultaneously the top forecaster on the internal Intelligence Community Prediction Market, the Good Judgment Project superforecaster prediction market, and on Hypermind. Marc was formerly in the Foreign Service with postings to the Office of the Vice President, the White House Situation Room, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the State Department, and overseas in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Nepal, Hong Kong and Sweden. Marc talks with us about working with Vice President Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby (1:18); the Pentagon Joint Staff and the Office of Net Assessments (4:55); ACE tournament Good Judgment Project and ICPM forecasting—open-source vs. classified information (6:55); how superforecasters think (11:35); how to set up the best predictive intelligence capacity for the US Government (21:50); formulating the right questions (29:27); when the truth is not wanted—North Korean plutonium reactor project in Syria incident (36:42), forecasting Kim Jong-un (39:39); China (47:28); whether we are headed into a Thucydides trap with China? (49:07); the possibility of a new Taiwan Straits Crisis (54:55); and what’s next for Good Judgment (1:00:04). As always, you can reach us at nonprophetspod.wordpress.com or at nonprophetspod@gmail.com. (recorded 01/04/2019)