Quotes About Foresight

We do not realize the full extent of the difference between near and far futures. Yet

It is often said that is wise he who can see things coming. Perhaps the wise one is the one who knows that he cannot see things far away.

Learning from the Mistakes of Others

When asked to imagine the future, we have the tendency to take the present as a baseline

It is hard to explain to naive data-driven people that risk is in the future, not in the past.

We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened.

We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things look like.

If you are a Stone Age historical thinker called on to predict the future in a comprehensive report for your chief tribal planner, you must project the invention of the wheel or you will miss pretty much all of the action. Now, if you can prophesy the invention of the wheel, you already know what a wheel looks like, and thus you already know how to build a wheel, so you are already on your way. The Black Swan needs to be predicted!

follows: to understand the future to the point of being able to predict it, you need to incorporate elements from this future itself. If

But the technology is only trivial retrospectively—not prospectively.

It is often said that "is wise he who can see things coming." Perhaps the wise one is the one who knows that he cannot see things far away.

their intuition getting in the way and blinding them.

we are simply not wise enough to be trusted with knowledge.

The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.

that we generally take risks not out of bravado but out of ignorance and blindness to probability!

those who are very good at predicting the past will think of themselves as good at predicting the future

an even smaller handful managed to foresee the full extent of the damage.

Someone who predicts will be fragile to prediction errors.

to understand the future to the point of being able to predict it, you need to incorporate elements from this future itself.

We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations.

We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.

those who cannot learn from experience, or don't mind taking risks they don't understand, may kill many.

Optionality is Promethean, narratives are Epimethean—

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.