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The fifth risk did not put him at risk of revealing classified information. “Project management,” was all he said.
John MacWilliams’s fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term risks with short-term solutions.
If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost.
If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems.
Before the Second World War meteorology had been a bit like medicine in the nineteenth century: the demand for expertise was so relentless that the supply had no choice but to make fraudulent appearances.
What could they call all these data people? “Data scientist,” his Facebook friend suggested. “We weren’t trying to create a new field or anything, just trying to get HR off our backs,” said DJ. He replaced the job titles for some openings with “data scientist.” To his surprise, the number of applicants for the jobs skyrocketed. “Data scientists” were what people wanted to be.
The Department of Commerce should really be called the Department of Information. Or maybe the Department of Data.
the dumb blackjack player is sometimes going to beat the card counter.
“Risk is uncertainty about the outcome.
The Climate Corporation had turned farming into decision science, and a matter of probabilities.
no longer playing roulette but blackjack.
“The problem with the internet is that it shows everyone on earth what they’re missing,” said Friedberg. “And if you can’t get to it, you feel you are getting fucked. That there is this very visceral and obvious shift that is happening in the world that you’re missing out on.”
It wasn’t between Democrats and Republicans. It was between the people who were in it for the mission, and the people who were in it for the money.
You don’t particularly care what the wind speed at five hundred millibars is. You want to know: What’s it going to do to my house?”
The only thing any of us can do completely on our own is to have the start of a good idea.
It did not offer up one single answer but a map of probabilities that allowed you to allocate your search resources in the most likely places.
