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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I highly recommend Stephen Tetlock’s book, super forecasting, who is the sponsor of the project you mention.

    One method of forecasting that he identified as effective was using a spreadsheet to record events that might occur over the next 6-18 months along with an initial probability based on good judgement and the factors you quoted. Then, every day look for new information that adjusts the forecast up or down by some, usually small percent. Repeat, and the goal is you will trend towards a reasonable %. I omitted many details but that was the jist.

    Now, that’s for forecasting on a short ish timeframe. There is a place for more open ended reasoning and imagination, but you have to be careful not to fall prey to your own biases.

    This particular forecast of OPs feels like it is ignoring several long running trends in technology adoption and user behavior without giving events that would address them, and forecasts something they care about doing better in the long-term, a source of bias to watch. I tend to agree with you that I think elements of this forecast are flawed.








  • I was an operations director in a prior role and oversaw the design and construction of several buildings. The last building was about $70 million, and we spent around $6 million on the design and programming.

    What most folks don’t understand is the scale of minutiae. I’ve spent an entire day of meetings hashing out floor box standards between all parties (IT, facilities, design, construction). The amount of preliminary site studies, permit planning, etc, that goes into hundreds of miles of rail, plus stations, interesting into existing infrastructure etc… It’s significant.

    I’ve also overwhelmed fiber builds, and have seen costs range upwards of $500k-$1m per mile of new fiber depending on if poles exist, or of trenching, right of way, permits, etc.

    And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg for what goes into these plans.