Ada Palmer

They cannot choose whether it occurs, but they can influence where it flows, which fields it devastates, which cities it spares.

Fortune, Machiavelli concludes, is arbiter of half-hour actions, but still she leaves the other half, or nearly half, for us to govern.

Experimental history, as outlined above, could test whether Machiavelli's metaphor actually describes how history works.

If history is pure chaos, if human action makes no predictable difference, then skilled and unskilled players should succeed equally often.

But if Machiavelli is right, patterns should emerge.

Players who build strong alliances, maintain credible threats, balance powers, and manage debts carefully should protect their homeland statistically more often than those who don't.

Not always, not with certainty, but measurably.

The flood still comes, but the dikes matter.

And if patterns emerge, experimental history then becomes a laboratory for learning what works.

Which kinds of dikes prove most effective?

Does early coalition building outperform late negotiation?

Do transparent commitments work better than strategic ambiguity?

The specific tactics of Renaissance cardinals won't apply to modern crises, but the principles might.

How to protect vulnerable positions between great powers when commitments under pressure hold or collapse?

What distinguishes successful from failed crisis management?

Palmer stumbled onto this through pedagogy, meteorologists developed it through necessity, historians, and political scientists might adopt it to learn how much we can actually govern within the half that fortune leaves us, and how to govern it well.

There's an image here.

It was published on January 25, 2026.

Images are included in the podcast episode description.