What we concluded.

Who is more to blame when a warning is ignored?Assessed from a stance

Stance · That responsibility follows the power to act: whoever could still have changed the outcome carries the larger share.

The one who dismissed it carries more, and the room agrees at 59 to 41 — but not because the warner "did their part". At the moment a warning arrives, only one of the two people can still change what happens, and blame follows the last hand on the wheel. The giver's share is real and it is smaller: a warning that was easy to set aside was badly given, and a warning with no consequence and no deadline in it is a worry, not a warning.

1. Give a warning with the consequence and the deadline in it. "The tank may fail" is a worry; "the tank fails by Thursday and the ward is downwind" is a warning.
2. When you receive one, say out loud what you will do about it. A stated "nothing" is at least a decision somebody can answer.
3. If you dismiss a warning, write the reason down. If you cannot write it, you have not dismissed it — you have avoided it.

Does anyone deserve credit for a decision that only worked out by luck?Better courses

Stance · That a decision and its outcome are two different things, and only one of them was ever in the person's hands.

Some credit, and the room's centre is there too. The product this floor sits beside is built on keeping the decision and the outcome apart: a good call can lose and a bad one can win, and a person who cannot tell those apart will learn the wrong lesson from both. Credit belongs to the part the person controlled — what they knew, what they weighed, what they were willing to risk and for whom — and not to the part the dice supplied afterwards.

1. Praise the reasoning you can see, not the result you can count: "you priced the downside and took it" rather than "it worked".
2. Ask what the decision looked like the moment before the outcome was known, and judge that moment.
3. When something worked by luck, say so. The person who admits it is the one to trust with the next call.

Would weekly transits through the Strait of Hormuz fall below the spring average?Where it stands

There is no answer, and the floor will not invent one. The series this question was written to settle against stopped being published in August, and nothing equivalent replaced it. The 428 positions stand as a record of what people expected in July, and as nothing more. Settling it against a different number would be settling a different question.

Would the Security Council name a new Secretary-General before September?The world answered

The room was 79 per cent "not before September" and the Council recommended a candidate on 28 August. The reasoning that lost — two vetoes stood in July and nothing between July and September changes a veto — was a good read of the record and a poor read of deadlines. A veto is a position, and positions are traded in the last week when every party loses face by missing the date. The reasoning that won was Sofia G.'s in one line: deadlines that embarrass everybody get met.

1. Before answering a "before date X" question, ask who is embarrassed if X passes. If the answer is everyone, discount the stalemate.
2. Separate what the record says from what the calendar does to the people in it. The record was right; the calendar moved them.

If nobody finds out, is a broken rule still broken?Assessed from a stance

Stance · That a rule is a promise to the people who keep it, not a bet on being caught.

A rule kept only while somebody is watching was never kept; it was rented. The 91 per cent who said "still broken" are describing what a rule is for: it lets other people rely on you without checking. Break it unseen and the rule still holds everywhere else — you have simply become the one place it does not, and the harm is not to the rule but to the reliance.

1. Ask what the rule lets somebody else stop worrying about. That is what you take from them.
2. If you would break it unseen, say so to the people who rely on it, and see whether you still would.