Maggie's Farm

Fascinating essay: The Signal and the Silence - When is prediction useful—and when is it dangerous?

...what about those future financial crises and terrorist attacks? For that matter, what about the risk of deepwater oil wells’ rupturing or of tsunamis’ hitting nuclear facilities? And those are just the “known unknowns.” What about the truly unknown unknowns? If we are to draw a useful lesson from Silver’s and Taleb’s excellent books, it is that we need both of them. As Silver contends, we should improve our forecasts whenever possible. But as Taleb cautions, we must have the modesty to admit that some matters do not lend themselves to sound forecasts—and plan accordingly.