Robert Rubin

Brad DeLong reviews the new Robert Rubin book In An Uncertain World. Rubin sounds like a brilliant guy, and I am sorry never to have met him. I like this description:

I have never seen anyone else able to guide a meeting to the consensus he wanted by occasionally raising his eyebrows and saying little other than, "That's very interesting, very important. Now I think we should hear what X has to say."

Rubin himself emphasizes his habit of "probabilistic thinking," always asking such questions as, "What else might happen?" and, "What if we're wrong?"; looking at the full range of possible outcomes rather than the most likely or the most comfortable; and recognizing that just because things came out well in one case, you didn't necessarily make a good decision, or that just because things turned out badly, you didn't necessarily make a bad one.