I gave this talk a few months ago, and it captures a lot of my shtick on “fatal certainty,” “the cult of prediction,” and the importance of rigorous imagination in strategic decision-making. Enjoy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxzth2cJICQ
For the past three decades I have written scenarios of the future for a living. I aim to make them detailed and plausible. That is all I can promise, because the more detailed each scenario gets, the less likely that scenario is to “come true.” Still, detailed scenarios, despite being…
August 16, 2023 Πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog one great thing.” – Fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus, c. 680-645 B.C.E. I am a hedgehog. And I’m supposed to be a fox. Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the…
Fatal Certainty: The Cult of Prediction and the Need for a New Way to Deal with Fundamental Future Uncertainty Since ancient times, human beings have craved certainty. Two and a half millennia ago, rulers facing life-and-death decisions sought guidance from prophets and oracles; closer to our own time, astrologers such…