Carissa Véliz

The one idea that I would like for you to take home today is that predictions can be weapons of power, but they only work if we believe them.

If Oedipus had laughed off the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, instead of completely freaking out about it, he would have never left for Thebes and made the prophecy come true.

We turn to profits because we're anxious about uncertainty.

But uncertainty is good news.

It means that the future is unwritten, that it's ours to write, and we can face the blank page with creativity, with curiosity, with the excitement of a sense of adventure.

Efforts to predict the future go hand in hand with efforts to control it.

So beware of prophets and prophecies.

It's only when we acknowledge that we don't know what the future holds and act accordingly that we can be sure to live in a free society.

Don't bow to people's predictions as if they were facts.

be like Joe Frazier.

When Muhammad Ali predicted his own victory in the 1971 heavyweight championship, Frazier took it as a provocation and ended up defeating the previously undefeated Grace Ali in the fight of the century.

So next time you hear a gloomy prediction about the social world, don't get discouraged.

Find the Joe Frazier within you.

rebel against tyrannical predictions.

Let's be brave enough to imagine and fight for a better world.

Perhaps then, all of us can make the future bright after all.

Thank you.

If I predict that it will rain tomorrow, it will have no effect on whether it actually rains.

But when I make a social prediction, that's very different because it changes the expectations of people if people believe me and that changes that which I'm predicting.

Thank you for having me, Mike.