Quotes About Prediction

The rarer the event, the less tractable, and the less we know about how frequent its occurrence—yet the rarer the event, the more confident these "scientists" involved in predicting, modeling, and using PowerPoint in conferences with equations in multicolor background have become.

You cannot look at the future by naive projection of the past.

The first error lies in taking a projection too seriously, without heeding its accuracy.

If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's past), then why should our future resemble our current past?

what is absent from the data should be taken into account—absence of Black Swans in the record doesn't mean these were not there.

Los Cisnes Negros que imaginamos, de los que hablamos y nos preocupamos no se parecen a los que previsiblemente son Cisnes Negros. Como veremos a continuación, nos preocupamos de los sucesos «improbables» equivocados.

Never ask people what they want, or where they want to go, or where they think they should go, or, worse, what they think they will desire tomorrow.

They would prefer a defective forecast to nothing.

Teller. We have always been suckers for those who tell us about the future

People can't predict how long they will be happy with recently acquired objects, how long their marriages will last, how their new jobs will turn out, yet it's subatomic particles that they cite as "limits of prediction." They're ignoring a mammoth standing in front of them in favor of matter even a microscope would not allow them to see.

Another way to see the beastly aspect of schedules and rigid projections is to think in limit situations. Would you like to know with great precision the date of your death? Would you like to know who committed the crime before the beginning of the movie? Actually, wouldn't it be better if the length of movies were kept a secret?

We can see that my activity in the market (and other random variables) depends far less on where I think the market or the random variable is going so much as it does on the degree of error I allow around such a confidence level.

You can project a continuation into the future.

o sucesso de um escritor, uma empresa, uma ideia, um músico, um atleta, tem de ser planetário, ou equivale a nada. Esses efeitos pioram a previsibilidade, já que hoje quase tudo na vida socioeconômica é dominado por Cisnes Negros. Nossa sofisticação faz com que continuamente coloquemos os carros na frente dos bois, criando coisas que somos cada vez menos capazes de compreender

Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong. Why is a theory never right? Because we will never know if all the swans are white

Black Swan Is Relative to Knowledge

The more remote the event, the less we can get empirical data (assuming generously that the future will resemble the past) and the more we need to rely on theory.

research discloses that high self-esteem is one of the best predictors of personal happiness

The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.

It's a curse to see all that might happen but never know what will.

Being a dead prophet was much better than being a live one.

I don't know. It's been terribly hard for me. How do I know you won't do it again?' 'Nobody is ever quite sure of what they will do. You aren't sure what you might do.

Here lies she who never lied; Whose skill often has been tried: Her prophecies shall still survive, And ever keep her name alive.

Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.