Fat Tails and the Folly of “This Time It’s Different”
A fascinating 2016 paper by Cirillo and Taleb on predicting major conflicts remains deeply relevant today. Their key insight? We consistently fool ourselves about the predictability of extreme events. Some sobering findings: Most striking? They quote an 1860 assessment celebrating an “unprecedented” 40-year peace and declining warfare… right before the bloodiest century in human history.…