Simone Stolzoff

But that same wiring is now transposed on a lot of these decisions that we have to make in our modern life that aren't actually life or death.

So we love certainty.

We love people who claim to know exactly when the market is going to crash or exactly how the relationship is going to end or who's going to win the 49ers game on Sunday.

But the truth is any prediction about the future is not certain by definition.

It is some level of chance.

And it's the same reason why we like music that's based on repeating patterns.

When prediction is easy, when we can feel like we can anticipate what's to come, we feel safe and secure.

But the truth is, humans are really bad at predicting the future.

So there's this really famous study by this guy named Phil Tetlock, and he collated data from a decade worth of predictions from the smartest people in the world.

So economists, politicians, journalists, etc.,

And his finding was that the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.

How can that be the case?

We are just really bad at predicting the future, whether it's something like what the interest rate is going to be next quarter or when the Iran war is going to end.

We try to make these predictions, and we put a lot of credence in experts' opinions, but there's very little accountability.

Think about sports, for example.

All of these talking heads on the TV are telling you who's going to win the game, this and that.

There's such little accountability to what actually works out.

And so even though we are attracted like moths to the flame to these certain predictions about what the future is going to look like, the truth is nothing in the future can be certain.

And so we have to become a little bit more comfortable with the uncertainty that we face.

Yeah.