History, Antifragility, Past and Future
History teaches the future, but not the way as we think.
During History, we had several events that caused more or less impact to the society. As we can see in a graph for illustrative purposes only:
Ok. Let’s move along.
Nowadays, technology nerds, who, as reported by Nassim Taleb, ignore the History and misinterpret it, believing that adopting technologies in an unbridled way, the History events will get as this:
And, in fact, in a first moment, with the adoption of its technologies, the timeline could stay linear and stable.
However, History is antifragile. It is an untamed animal. It cannot be controlled. History will follow its course of randomness and volatility, in one way or another.
The bomb ends up bursting. “Less soon” or not so soon.
Nonetheless, after a short period of stability and involatility, people are in their comfort zones.
They down their guard. They believe they are safe. They have a completely distorted view of reality. They live in a fairy tale.
Assuming a behavior devoid of cause and effect (which is natural in human beings, considering our difficulty in seeing obvious things), in a situation that the “volcano” did not erupt for a little amount of time, everyone may think that the nerds were right.
What ends up happening? We already know. People end up being caught off guard. Surprised by a reality that they believed did not exist, but that, in fact, never stopped being there.
Tech nerds tried to plug the volcano with a wine cork.
What happens next:
Thus, we come to the conclusion of the following: we cannot predict the future based on the past, on History. But we know that the future will not be entirely different from the past.
If we look at two points in the past, for example, 3000 B.C. and 500 A.D., we can clearly see that they have many differences.
Though, to 3000 B.C. become 500 A.D., it had to change, first, into 2999 B.C., 2998 B.C., and so on.
In this way, we see that the past never loses contact, in fact, with the future.
Because they are linked by a ubiquitous feather that never needs to go to the inkwell: the present.
