Q&A: Is There No Divine Involvement in the Course of the World?
Is There No Divine Involvement in the Course of the World?
Question
Experts say Hamas is deterred — result: we saw the results on 10/7.
Experts say that a confrontation with Hezbollah would bring about no simple devastation in the country — result: the confrontation turned out to be far, far less terrible.
Experts say (in recent days) that Assad’s regime will survive after all — and in the end it actually fell faster than expected.
My assumption is that these experts understand what they’re talking about. Intelligent, bright people, with strategic knowledge, intelligence sources, attentiveness, etc.
And in the end it turns out that many things unfold the opposite of what they think.
Maybe there really is an unseen hand here (or maybe it isn’t so unseen after all)?
Answer
Maybe. But it seems more likely to me that experts are experts in what has been, not in what will be, as Ben-Gurion said.
It’s just always worth distinguishing between 2 kinds of expertise:
1. Existing facts
2. Things dependent on human actions
An example of the first: tomorrow it will snow.
You do nothing to change the experts’ forecast, you just prepare warming gloves and so on for tomorrow,
and you do not affect the forecast. Similar to this are history, archaeology, and so on.
An example of the second, which depends on human actions: a certain army is about to attack some country; that country defends itself and prepares, and perhaps even launches a preemptive strike.
Whereas in type 1 expertise they are accurate, in type 2 much less so, because people listen to them and act or do not act accordingly, and that itself disproves the forecast. The forecast may be completely correct at its core, but human actions change it.
For example: “Hamas is deterred” = people believe them = the IDF does not prepare properly = even if it was deterred, at some point it sees that it should attack.
“Hezbollah is dangerous” = people believe them = they prepare beepers, gather information on weapons depots, plant wiretaps and spies = Hezbollah becomes less dangerous.
And likewise, a forecast that there will be a shortage of hospital beds = a normal government prepares and builds more wards, trains more doctors, and then lo and behold, their forecast is disproved, because in the end, after doing everything that needed to be done, there really is no shortage of hospital beds.