# Notice When People Are Directionally Correct

I started watching [Peter Zeihan](https://www.youtube.com/@ZeihanonGeopolitics) 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 seas.

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 ends up being resolved rather quickly 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 can be hard to notice given how easy it is to memory-holing past beliefs, but something like the Houthis being able to cause as much disruption as they have was quite far 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 response is how easy it would be. When there's ambiguity, humans have a strong tendency to make up excuses as to why they were right all along. In most cases, I suspect it's better to push toward the other end of the spectrum and assume that there probably were ways in which you could have improved your prediction. 

I tried searching for possible ways that I should update and the following thoughts came to mind, which I'll share 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 have assigned this more credibility.  
• I hadn't considered the possibility that a country that allowed its navy to become weak might have a significant lead time on strengthening it. This could allow piracy to go on for longer than you might naively expect.  
• 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 other countries might be reluctant to prevent a non-state actor from impeding shipping due to 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 Somali pirate issues from years ago, I didn't properly update on this knowledge. I suspect I updated on these pirates being easily defeated when the world got serious, but I failed to update on this ever having been a problem at all.  
• I forgot to take into account the possibility 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. More pessimistically, I suspect most people just grab one learning from an incident and declare themselves to have "already learned the lesson".

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

(I find the handle "directionally correct" extremely convenient. It's so much easier to say than 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 why I'm hearing this term more often these days).  
  
**Further update:** Iranian seizure of the [MSC Aries](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Iranian_seizure_of_the_MCS_Aries)