-Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan …we are explanation-seeking animals who tend to think that everything has an identifiable cause and grab the most apparent one as the explanation. Yet there may not be a visible because; to the contrary, frequently there is nothing, not even a spectrum of possible explanations. But silent evidence masks this
Tag: Uncertainty
Forecasting: an attempt to predict the unknowable by measuring the irrelevant
— Jason Zweig
Science and religion operate in different domains
From “10 Things Your Pastor Wants to Tell You.” P. 7 Religion deals with what theologian Paul Tillich called ‘ultimate concerns’ — abstract philosophical questions such as what the nature of life is and why we are here. Religion seeks meaning, purpose, and moral truth, not physical knowledge. Science, on the other hand, seeks to
In science, philosophy, and investing, we never know what is “true.”
— Bill Bonner Letter January 2017 In science, philosophy, and investing, we never know what is “true.” The best we can do is test propositions to see if they are false. An experiment can prove that something is wrong; it can never prove it is not wrong. You say, “Water always boils at 212 degrees
I want room to change my mind because changing your mind is good. Changing your mind means you are learning, you are making progress, it means you are taking in new information. So we need to give ourselves the ability to change our mind
— Guy Spier I want room to change my mind because changing your mind is good. Changing your mind means you are learning, you are making progress, it means you are taking in new information. So we need to give ourselves the ability to change our mind.”
A puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight
– Thinking, Fast and Slow P. 13 … a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the