Quotes About Uncertainty

gravest of all manifestations of silent evidence, the illusion of stability. The

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.

in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty.

Expert problems (in which the expert knows a lot but less than he thinks he does) often bring fragilities, and acceptance of ignorance the reverse.

Monte Carlo (the old name for a roulette wheel)

but their error rate is so large that it is far more significant than the projection itself!

Conversely, when you think you know more than you do, you are fragile (to error).

If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.

or "what are the ten best books

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.

the power of optionality as an alternative way of doing things, opportunistically, with some large edge coming from asymmetry with large benefits and benign harm. It is a way—the only way—to domesticate uncertainty, to work rationally without understanding the future, while reliance on narratives is the exact opposite: one is domesticated by uncertainty, and ironically set back. You cannot look at the future by naive projection of the past.

We cannot truly plan, because we do not understand the future—but this is not necessarily bad news. We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.

the Black Swan is not just about the occurrence of some event but also about its depth and consequences.)

In these professions, no matter how highly paid, your income is subject to gravity.

their intention was to bring a critical "balance" and use me as a counter to the numerous imaginative forecasts

They would prefer a defective forecast to nothing.

The turkey problem can be generalized to any situation where the same hand that feeds you can be the one that wrings your neck. Consider

In other words, it will not be Black Swan driven.

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. … Mother Nature does not tell you how many holes there are on the roulette table … In this book, considering that alternative outcomes could have taken place, that the world could have been different, is the core of probabilistic thinking.

major ramification of the ludic fallacy: how those whose job it is to make us aware of uncertainty fail us and divert us into bogus certainties through the back door.

The original Aramaic version had a wild ass, instead of a wolf, showing off his freedom. But the wild ass ends up eaten by the lion. Freedom entails risks—real skin in the game. Freedom is never free.

this avoidance of small mistakes makes the large ones more severe.

There is one world in which I believe the habit of mistaking luck for skill is most prevalent—and most conspicuous—and that is the world of markets. By