Grey swans and optimism

As an aside to the last post, The Black Swan shows how ridiculous it is for humans to make predictions: we're terrible at it. So I was both pleased and disappointed to see the Taleb had not contributed to the current Edge book, What Are You Optimistic About? edited by John Brockman. On the contrary, he was (appropriately) a contributor to What We Believe But Cannot Prove. These Edge books are pretty phenomenal in terms of the contributors: they are generally the thought leaders of today. Check them out.