Counterfactuals highlight how radically open the possibilities once were and how easily our best-laid plans can be blown away by flapping butterfly wings. Immersion in what-if history can give us a visceral feeling for Taleb’s vision of radical indeterminacy. Savoring how history could have generated an infinite array of alternative outcomes and could now generate a similar array of alternative futures, is like contemplating the one hundred billion known stars in our galaxy and the one hundred billion known galaxies. It instills profound humility.
