Academy Required Reading on Stephanie Rebecca

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called “literary economics,” as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the “new economic history.” Brought ahead of the Academy program in NYC as recommended reading, Kindleberger describes the system for collective human delusion.

“Money is a public good; as such, it lends itself to private exploitation.”

Markets are emotional weather systems pretending to be rational machines. Panic spreads socially. Euphoria spreads socially. Civilization periodically hallucinates value into existence and then acts shocked when the hallucination collapses. When everyone suddenly sounds certain. When complexity gets replaced by slogans. When risk gets renamed innovation.

Superforcasting

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In 2011, IARPA, the research arm of the US intelligence community, launched a massive competition to identify cutting-edge methods to forecast geopolitical events. Four years, 500 questions, and over a million forecasts later, the Good Judgment Project (GJP) led by Philip Tetlock and Barbara Mellers at the University of Pennsylvania emerged as the undisputed victor in the tournament.

GJP’s forecasts were so accurate that they even outperformed those of intelligence analysts with access to classified data. One of the biggest discoveries of GJP were the Superforecasters: GJP research found compelling evidence that some people are exceptionally skilled at assigning realistic probabilities to possible outcomes even on topics outside their primary subject-matter training.