Sometimes, a Black Swan..

I read today an interesting article about Nicholas Taleb. Very interesting, it didn’t read anything like from the time of Freakonomics. In particular he talk about the funny way people do estimations, forecasts and explain complex phenomenon like stock exchange market, social relationships, politics. We often impose our belief on the reality (later, when we try to explain it). Some ideas he brings:

• Since we can’t control unpredictable events, we should accept uncertainty and seek to maximize our exposure to serendipity, as by putting ourselves in the way of new ideas.
• Since there is such danger in accepting conclusions based on too little information simply because they confirm our beliefs, we should try to remain aware in the present of what we are doing, paying attention to what actually happens and refraining as far as possible from imposing theories on our experience.
• We should recognize our poor record as a species in predicting the future, that we are much better at doing than knowing. Some things are more predictable than others: we are safe enough in expecting tomorrow’s sunrise to plan on breakfast. We can start noticing which situations are most susceptible to black swans, and when we encounter them, remember how little we truly know so our ignorance doesn’t lead us around by the nose. 

He got the point…

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/