Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

by Philip E. Tetlock

Petraeus also supports sending officers to top universities for graduate education, not to acquire a body of knowledge, although that is a secondary benefit, but to encounter surprises of another kind. “It teaches you that there are seriously bright people out in the world who have very different basic assumptions about a variety of different topics and therefore arrive at conclusions on issues that are very, very different from one’s own and very different from mainstream kind of thinking, particularly in uniform,” Petraeus said. Like encountering shocks on a battlefield, grappling with other ways of thinking trains officers to be mentally flexible. Petraeus speaks from experience. Thirteen years after graduating from West Point, he earned a PhD in international relations from Princeton University, an experience he calls “invaluable.”