Quotes About Uncertainty

Our operation has a mortality rate of 1%. So far we have operated on ninety-nine patients with great success; you are our one hundreth, hence you have a 100% probability of dying on the table.

Recall that the most fragile is the predictive, what is built on the basis of predictability—in other words, those who underestimate Black Swans will eventually exit the population.

when its wording is slightly modified.

people's understanding of probability does not translate into their behavior).

the effects on the environment are not foreseeable—nobody studied the interactions.

Beware of precise plans by governments. As

In general, positive Black Swans take time to show their effect while negative ones happen very quickly—it is much easier and much faster to destroy than to build.

Options like dispersion of outcomes and don't care about the average too much.

longer-term predictions are more reliable than short-term ones, given that one can be quite certain that what is Black Swan–prone will be eventually swallowed by history since time augments the probability of such an event.

Furthermore, people who make forecasts professionally are often more affected by such impediments than those who don't.

No one in particular is a good predictor of anything. Sorry.

in the presence of nonlinearities, the longer the forecast the worse its accuracy.

could not understand what made one explanation more likely than the other

Antifragile shows how people confuse risk of ruin with variations and fluctuations—a simplification that violates a deeper, more rigorous logic of things.

as they are hedging the possibility of their falling into the same situation some day.

show how some degree of unpredictability (or lack of knowledge) can be beneficial to our defective species.

It is true that 1,000 days cannot prove you right, but one day can prove you to be wrong.

The convex (left) is antifragile, the concave (right) is fragile (has

This little bit of uncertainty might make the diner relax and forget the time pressures.

Events that are nonrepeatable are ignored before their occurrence, and overestimated after (for a while). After

Every single risk you take adds up to reduce your life expectancy.

extreme event as a starting point and not treat it as an exception to be pushed under the rug.

is neither meaningful nor relevant.

But there are some things I can remain skeptical about, and others I can safely consider certain.