Summary
The world is stranger than strange, subject to chaotic sensitive dependence on initial conditions, stochastic phenomena, recursive system dynamics, network feedback effects, and volatility amplification. Our ability to forecast can appear to work for some time, only to fail at the worst possible time.
Moreover, a variety of cognitive biases make us see patterns in this chaotic randomness where none exist and make us be confident in our ability to either predict or control that which we cannot. And because we believe ourselves to be better than we are, and experts believe themselves to be better than they are, and prefer the illusion of certainty regarding the future rather than accepting its innate unpredictability, we cannot fully appreciate the degree to which we are unable to forecast.
The way to manage unpredictability is not with faulty models worsened by cognitive biases but by on-demand resources, the subject of Chapter 14.
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