October 2, 2023 Another avenue into the big truth expressed by Fatal Certainty: How a Cult of Prediction Made the Twenty-First Century an Era of Strategic Shock – and How Rigorous Imagination Could Bring Us Back comes from ancient approaches to dealing with fundamental, irreducible uncertainty. Decisions need to be made. This…
Category: Intersubjective Realities
Fatal Certainty: The Premise
September 20, 2023 Someone just asked me what the premise of my book was, what readers would take away from it. So I typed this up. My premise is that a cult of prediction has turned the 21st century into a series of avoidable shocks – 9/11, the failure of…
Red vs. Blue vs…. Green?
September 11, 2023 It’s football season again, and many of us (not me) are participating in fantasy football betting groups. In its own little way, this is a symptom of what I like to call “the Cult of Prediction.” It used to be that only “nerds” participated in “rotisserie leagues”…
Predict the Predictable, Anticipate the Unpredictable
September 6, 2023 Much of what I write here may seem to disparage all prediction. If that is the case, I need to clarify a few points. Prediction is a very useful and necessary endeavor – when it is applied to predictable things. Indeed, the scientific revolution, ever since the…