Econ Talk is a daily podcast from CNN.com and the iReport network. This week, Jarrett Bellini talks about how we can use our ignorance to make better decisions. He also looks at why some things are more robust to forecast error than others. All this and more on econ talk day: Thursday 9am ET.
Nassim Taleb talks about the challenges of coping with uncertainty, predicting events, and understanding history. This wide-ranging conversation looks at investment, health, history and other areas where data play a key role. Taleb, the author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, imagines two countries, Mediocristan and Extremistan where the ability to understand the past and predict the future is radically different. Taleb's contention is that we often bring our intuition from Mediocristan for the events of Extremistan, leading us to error. The result is a tendency to be blind-sided by the unexpected.