Nietzsche: How to be Dynamite

4 Lessons from the World’s Greatest Superforecaster

Nietzsche had a unique vision that allowed him to see through the beliefs of most people. His writings gave his vision tremendous colour. Painting: Wassily Kandinsky, Landscape with Factory Chimney, 1910. (Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain).

“I am not a man, I am dynamite.”

No philosopher has ever been so “right” as Nietzsche. His insights into western civilisation and what it is to be human in the modern world are so on the money, they seem like God-given prophesies.

Nietzsche had an extraordinary insight into human belief systems. He called out the beliefs that held the Victorian world together: official religion, nationalist politics, and faith in science and reason. He was dynamite because he blew those beliefs to smithereens.

What made Nietzsche such a great critic and forecaster for our entire culture? The 2015 book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, examines how some people can be so consistently right about the future, while supposed experts get it so wrong.

Having studied the phenomenon at length, the authors concluded that “superforecasters” are not just lucky. They share traits that enable them to bypass the cognitive biases that cloud the judgement of most people.

We’re all invested in the future and investors too often let emotion guide them. Nietzsche was the ultimate superforecaster because he detached himself from others’…