Sublime

Rationality, then, does not determine behavior. Within the area of rationality behavior is perfectly flexible and adaptable to abilities, goals, and knowledge. Instead, behavior is determined by the irrational and nonrational elements that bound the area of rationality. The area of rationality is the area of adaptability to these nonrational elemen

This property—group forecasts beat individual ones—has been found to be true in almost every field in which it has been studied. And yet while the notion that aggregate forecasts beat individual ones is an important empirical regularity, it is sometimes used as a cop-out when forecasts might be improved.

Foxes, Tetlock found, are considerably better at forecasting than hedgehogs.

“No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength,

In his desire to wrest sole control of risk policy from experts, Slovic has challenged the foundation of their expertise: the idea that risk is objective.

Adam Appich, master of science, is there with several studies that show how legacy cognitive blindness will forever prevent people from acting in their own best interests.

Now comes the hardest-to-grasp part of Taleb’s view of the world. He posits that historical probabilities—all the possible ways the future could unfold—are distributed like wealth, not height. That means our world is vastly more volatile than most of us realize and we are at risk of grave miscalculations.