Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quote
Imagine taking a test knowing the answer. While we know that history flows forward, it is difficult to realize that we envision it backward. Why is it so? We will discuss the point in Chapter 11 but here is a possible explanation: Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny. If they were made for us to understand things, then we would have a machine in it that would run the past history as in a VCR, with a correct chronology, and it would slow us down so much that we would have trouble operating. Psychologists call this overestimation of what one knew at the time of the event due to subsequent information the hindsight bias, the I knew it all along effect.
Imagine taking a test knowing the answer. While we know that history flows forward, it is difficult to realize that we envision it backward. Why is it so? We will discuss the point in Chapter 11 but here is a possible explanation: Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny. If they were made for us to understand things, then we would have a machine in it that would run the past history as in a VCR, with a correct chronology, and it would slow us down so much that we would have trouble operating. Psychologists call this overestimation of what one knew at the time of the event due to subsequent information the hindsight bias, the I knew it all along effect.
Related Quotes
About Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb is the author of the Incerto, a five-volume work on the nature of uncertainty published between 2001 and 2018 (notably, The Black Swan and Antifragile). He has taught at several universities, serving as a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering since September 2008. He has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance and is currently an adviser at Universa Investments. The Sunday Times described his 2007 book The Black Swan as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II.
Taleb criticized risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises, subsequently profiting from the Black Monday (1987) and the 2008 financial crisis. He advocates what he calls a "black swan robust" society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events. He proposes what he has termed "antifragility" in systems; that is, an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events, errors, and volatility, as well as "convex tinkering" as a method of scientific discovery, by which he means that decentralized experimentation outperforms directed research.