Most cultures see the future as something ahead and the past as behind. But the Aymara of the Andean highlands have the reverse perspective. For them, the past is in front (because you can see it) and the future is behind (because you can’t see it yet). I certainly don’t think this observation can make a case for linguistic determinism,  but the Aymara time metaphor is a perfect way to introduce the ideas of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  We think we can foresee the future, we think we have the analytical and technological means to predict it. But the truth is, we are terrible at forecasting. The world is a much more unexpected place than we would like to believe and yet we delude ourselves thinking we live, as rats in a lab, in a controlled environment. Perhaps, we should all adopt the Aymara perspective, stop pretending we can see what’s behind, confront the past face to face and start learning from our mistakes.

LEARNING TO EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Edge Video

The 9/11 commission has drawn more attention for the testimony it has gathered than for the purpose it has set for itself. Today the commission will hear from Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to President Bush, and her account of the administration's policies before Sept. 11 is likely to differ from that of Richard Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, in most particulars except one: it will be disputed.

There is more than politics at work here, although politics explains a lot. The commission itself, with its mandate, may have compromised its report before it is even delivered. That mandate is "to provide a 'full and complete accounting' of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future."

It sounds uncontroversial, reasonable, even admirable, yet it contains at least three flaws that are common to most such inquiries into past events. To recognize those flaws, it is necessary to understand the concept of the "black swan."

A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. Our minds are designed to retain, for efficient storage, past information that fits into a compressed narrative. This distortion, called the hindsight bias, prevents us from adequately learning from the past.

Black swans can have extreme effects: just a few explain almost everything, from the success of some ideas and religions to events in our personal lives. Moreover, their influence seems to have grown in the 20th century, while ordinary events — the ones we study and discuss and learn about in history or from the news — are becoming increasingly inconsequential.

Consider: How would an understanding of the world on June 27, 1914, have helped anyone guess what was to happen next? The rise of Hitler, the demise of the Soviet bloc, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, the Internet bubble: not only were these events unpredictable, but anyone who correctly forecast any of them would have been deemed a lunatic (indeed, some were). This accusation of lunacy would have also applied to a correct prediction of the events of 9/11 — a black swan of the vicious variety.

More here...

Related articles in ChiliConDarwin:

1. •Living In Extremistan. Extremistan is the republic of the black swans where the improbable is always there, waiting to break into your destiny at the turn of any corner. The modern human tragedy is that we think we live ...
   

2. •Is Optimism Possible In An Unpredictable World? From the World Question Center at Edge.com here’s Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s answer to the 2007 question: “What are you optimistic about?” His views on the future of America are particularly interesti...
   

3. •The Good Old Future. This extraordinary collection of postcards from the year 1900 proves how bad we are at predicting and imagining the future. They show a version of the year 2000 which doesn’t include computers, Goo...
   

4. •Autism, Evolution And The Narrative Fallacy. People like to theorize about almost anything. Why men “drive better” than women, why Mentos react when thrown in a bottle of Diet Coke, why Tony Blair went along with Bush in the Iraq War, what ha...
   

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