"What's Going On Here?"

Earlier in my life I would be at a social or professional meeting, when someone asked me, "Do you know what's going on here?" - meaning what was happening politically and interpersonally, not whether I understood the subject being discussed. Often I did not know what was going on.

It is certainly possible to develop such skills - maybe by close reading of certain novels (Jane Austen?) or closely following the plot of certain movies or films. Just quietly following what's going on in the social world around one seems to be an excellent training practice, especially when it's possible to check if your conclusions were right or wrong.

We are also looking into reports that ability to predict future news events varies greatly among people, can be taught and learned to some extent, and that at least one study, funded by the CIA, found that the best predictors without access to classified information could predict future events better than intelligence professionals with classified access. For more information see a book by the leading advocate, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, published in 2016. We haven't seen much followup.