Transcription
Do you remember when being wrong mattered? It doesn't matter anymore.
It is very common right now that people in the public space make predictions, their claims collapse, things are said with complete and total confidence, they get it all wrong, and nothing happens. No corrections, zero accountability, zero consequences for their careers. And the cleanest example of this is the Trump administration and everything surrounding it.
Think about how many certainty level claims have been made. Definitive statements about what was guaranteed to happen. We're going to get this election turned over. This was rigged by Joe Biden in 2020. We're going to get it turned over. The mass fraud is going to be proven and arrests are coming. It's all going to happen. And it never happened. And Trump still has his base. The economy is about to boom like never before. Obamacare will be replaced with something better and it's all imminent and I'm going to make it happen. And then it doesn't happen. It's not like it kind of happened. It doesn't happen in any form. It's not delayed. It's not two weeks away. It's just not happening. Mexico is going to pay for a wall we will build across the entire US Mexico border. The wall never gets built and Mexico pays for nothing.
What were the consequences of those failed predictions? None. The people making the claims, and this is bigger than Trump. I'm talking about media people as well. They didn't come back and go, "I got it wrong." Didn't happen. "Oh, you know, it was misunderstood. I'm going to change my approach." They just move on to the next claim, the next prediction, the next confident assertion. That is the system right now.
There is zero accountability. There is no moment where the audience is expected to compare what was said with what happened and then say, "Hey, you know what? They didn't tell me the truth or they got it very wrong." It's just like you can hit the reset button on your video game anytime you want. New claim replaces the old one. New prediction takes its place. And then there's no consequences for getting it wrong again and again.
What matters today is not accuracy. It's can you keep people's attention. And so this is why it doesn't matter when you get every prediction wrong. If the predictions get attention and then you get you have more predictions and those get attention again. Confidence and attention beat correctness. Right now if you say something clearly and forcefully, it spreads and it gets shared and clipped and repeated regardless of whether it holds up. And when the truth catches up to you, the conversation has moved on.
Now, I've talked before. I could get a lot of clicks by just hair on fire. "There will be no 2026 election stuff." I don't believe it. And I don't say things on this show that I don't believe, but I absolutely could weaponize that for clicks and attention. And then I would be wrong because there's going to be a 2026 election. But would there be consequences for me getting that wrong? I don't think so. And you can always offramp and go, "Well, Trump decided he didn't need to cancel it." I don't do this sort of thing.
But the truth is that most people aren't tracking every prediction. They're not keeping a tally of who was right and who was wrong. And audiences also aren't punishing people, elected officials nor media figures, for getting it wrong again and again and again. If a claim aligns with their beliefs, they are even less likely to hold people accountable for whether it actually happened.
So where we are ending up is a very sad place where a system allows being wrong with no cost and sometimes it even rewards you. When you were the first to make wrong predictions boldly and confidently, you get the clicks, you get the audience, the media environment moves really fast, and then when it doesn't happen, everybody's forgotten about it.
Now, the Trump era didn't create this. It did expose it, though. You can make endless prediction again and again and again. You get it all wrong and your audience doesn't care. There's no uh mechanism to force a reckoning with what people get wrong. And so the result that is terrifying society is that the standard for truth has basically gone away. You get everything wrong all the time. There's no penalty. People who hedge and wait for evidence, if anything, are punished because they're not being fast enough in getting you their opinions and they're not being uh loud and confident enough. They're saying, "Well, we need more information about this."
So, what we have developed and kind of encouraged here is an informational environment that is driven by repetition more than it is by accuracy.
What would fix it? I mean, listen, at some kind of basic level, you need to rebuild an accountability, an accountability loop, and it has to be part of normal political media. If someone makes a prediction, you've got to revisit it. If someone makes a claim, we have to go back and compare it to what actually happened. And then when people get it wrong, we've got to make it visible. We're not doing gotchas. It's called having standards.
In any other field, if you were wrong as often as some of these political people are, trust in you would decline. Your ability to earn an income with your predictions would decline. In politics, especially in the Trump era, it has no consequences. And in fact, it often is rewarded. Say whatever gets attention right now and then you never have to look back.
I don't believe in just blaming the average person, but it takes two to tango. And if audiences don't hold their elected officials or media figures to some kind of standard of truth, then it follows naturally that they would keep doing it because they keep getting away with it. So, we have to do our part as audience members, and I say that as someone who consumes content. I have to do my part as a content creator. But we do need to push for truth to matter and for getting it wrong to destroy people's credibility.
Now, if you are analyzing something thoughtfully and you say, "Hey, listen. I'm like 60/40. I think this is more likely." That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the confident "this will happen." "The election was rigged and it will be overturned." And of course, that was never going to happen. Those people should be held accountable for their failures.
Let me know what you think. Thanks for watching. Check out this other video. And if you like our content, make sure to subscribe so YouTube puts our videos in your feed. And subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and.