Radical Uncertainty

Much economic advice is bogus quantification, warn two leading experts in this essential book, now with a preface on COVID-19. Invented numbers offer a false sense of security; we need instead robust narratives that give us the confidence to manage uncertainty. “An elegant and careful guide to thinking about personal and social economics, especially in a time of uncertainty. The timing is impeccable." — Christine Kenneally, New York Times Book Review Some uncertainties are resolvable. The insurance industry’s actuarial tables and the gambler’s roulette wheel both yield to the tools of probability theory. Most situations in life, however, involve a deeper kind of uncertainty, a radical uncertainty for which historical data provide no useful guidance to future outcomes. Radical uncertainty concerns events whose determinants are insufficiently understood for probabilities to be known or forecasting possible. Before President Barack Obama made the fateful decision to send in the Navy Seals, his advisers offered him wildly divergent estimates of the odds that Osama bin Laden would be in the Abbottabad compound. In 2000, no one—not least Steve Jobs—knew what a smartphone was; how could anyone have predicted how many would be sold in 2020? And financial advisers who confidently provide the information required in the standard retirement planning package—what will interest rates, the cost of living, and your state of health be in 2050?—demonstrate only that their advice is worthless. The limits of certainty demonstrate the power of human judgment over artificial intelligence. In most critical decisions there can be no forecasts or probability distributions on which we might sensibly rely. Instead of inventing numbers to fill the gaps in our knowledge, we should adopt business, political, and personal strategies that will be robust to alternative futures and resilient to unpredictable events. Within the security of such a robust and resilient reference narrative, uncertainty can be embraced, because it is the source of creativity, excitement, and profit.

'A brilliant new book' Daily Telegraph 'Well written . . . and often entertaining' The Times 'A sparkling analysis' Prospect When uncertainty is all around us, and the facts are not clear, how can we make good decisions? We do not know what the future will hold, particularly in the midst of a crisis, but we must make decisions anyway. We regularly crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have, forgetting that humans are successful because we have adapted to an environment that we understand only imperfectly. Throughout history we have developed a variety of ways of coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives. This incisive and eye-opening book draws on biography, history, mathematics, economics and philosophy to highlight the most successful - and most short-sighted - methods of dealing with an unknowable future. Ultimately, the authors argue, the prevalent method of our age falls short, giving us a false understanding of our power to make predictions, leading to many of the problems we experience today. Tightly argued, provocative and written with wit and flair, Radical Uncertainty is at once an exploration of the limits of numbers and a celebration of human instinct and wisdom.

“Mervyn King may well have written the most important book to come out of the financial crisis. Agree or disagree, King’s visionary ideas deserve the attention of everyone from economics students to heads of state.” —Lawrence H. Summers Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his ten years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance. The Industrial Revolution built the foundation of our modern capitalist age. Yet the flowering of technological innovations during that dynamic period relied on the widespread adoption of two much older ideas: the creation of paper money and the invention of banks that issued credit. We take these systems for granted today, yet at their core both ideas were revolutionary and almost magical. Common paper became as precious as gold, and risky long-term loans were transformed into safe short-term bank deposits. As King argues, this is financial alchemy—the creation of extraordinary financial powers that defy reality and common sense. Faith in these powers has led to huge benefits; the liquidity they create has fueled economic growth for two centuries now. However, they have also produced an unending string of economic disasters, from hyperinflations to banking collapses to the recent global recession and current stagnation. How do we reconcile the potent strengths of these ideas with their inherent weaknesses? King draws on his unique experience to present fresh interpretations of these economic forces and to point the way forward for the global economy. His bold solutions cut through current overstuffed and needlessly complex legislation to provide a clear path to durable prosperity and the end of overreliance on the alchemy of our financial ancestors.

Drawing upon the long tradition of recalcitrant thought in Western humanist scholarship, this book rethinks education and educational research at a time of intense social transformation. By revisiting a range of post-foundational ideas and developing their own methodological experiment, Stephen Carney and Ulla Ambrosius Madsen reimagine the possibilities for the comparative study of education. Exploring the experiences of young people in Denmark, South Korea and Zambia, this book illustrates how these very different contexts are increasingly connected by common narratives of purpose, as well as overheated promises of success. Focusing on the writings of Jean Baudrillard, the authors examine them in the context of works by other theorists of modernity, to explore processes of simulation and disappearance that are shaping life worldwide. In the process, the authors paint a rich portrait of education and schooling as a site of joy, hope, pain and ambivalence. Encompassing both theoretical and methodological innovation, Education in Radical Uncertainty provides inspiration for scholars and students attempting to approach the fields of comparative education, education policy and youth studies anew.

In the last two hundred years, the earth has increasingly become the private property of a few classes, races, transnational corporations, and nations. Repeated claims about the "tragedy of the commons" and the "crisis of capitalism" have done little to explain this concentration of land, encourage solution-building to solve resource depletion, or address our current socio-ecological crisis. The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty presents a new explanation, vision, and action plan based on the idea of commoning the land. The book argues that by commoning the land, rather than privatising it, we can develop the foundation for prosperity without destructive growth and address both local and global challenges. Making the land the most fundamental priority of all commons does not only give hope, it also opens the doors to a new world in which economy, environment, and society are decolonised and liberated.

Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chodron offers short, stand-alone readings designed to help readers cultivate compassion and awareness amid the challenges of daily living.

If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in another. This is the concept of 'obliquity': paradoxical as it sounds, many goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly. The richest men and women are not the most materialistic; the happiest people are not necessarily those who focus on happiness, and the most profitable companies are not always the most profit-oriented as the recent financial crisis showed us. Whether overcoming geographical obstacles, winning decisive battles or meeting sales targets, history shows that oblique approaches are the most successful, especially in difficult terrain. John Kay applies his provocative, universal theory to everything from international business to town planning and from football to managing forest fire.