On Risk II: Trivia

"A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt." (Émile Durkheim, "Suicide: A Study in Sociology", 1897)

"It is a matter of primary importance in the cultivation of those sciences in which truth is discoverable by the human intellect that the investigator should be free, independent, unshackled in his movement; that he should be allowed and enabled to fix his mind intently, nay, exclusively, on his special object, without the risk of being distracted every other minute in the process and progress of his inquiry by charges of temerariousness, or by warnings against extravagance or scandal." (John H Newman, "The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated", 1905)

"The final truth about phenomena resides in the mathematical description of it; so long as there is no imperfection in this, our knowledge is complete. We go beyond the mathematical formula at our own risk; we may find a [nonmathematical] model or picture that helps us to understand it, but we have no right to expect this, and our failure to find such a model or picture need not indicate that either our reasoning or our knowledge is at fault." (James Jeans, "The Mysterious Universe", 1930)

"It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory - if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions. […] A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it." (Karl R Popper,"Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge", 1963)

"Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse." (Donella Meadows et al, "The Limits to Growth", 1972)

"Demonstrative reasoning differs from plausible reasoning just as the fact differs from the supposition, just as actual existence differs from the possibility of existence. Demonstrative reasoning is reliable, incontrovertible and final. Plausible reasoning is conditional, arguable and oft-times risky." (Yakov Khurgin, "Did You Say Mathematics?", 1974)

"In reasoning, as in every other activity, it is, of course, easy to fall into error. In order to reduce this risk, at least to some extent, it is useful to support intuition with suitable superstructures: in this case, the superstructure is logic (or, to be precise, the logic of certainty)." (Bruno de Finetti, "Theory of Probability", 1974)

"When you are confronted by any complex social system […] with things about it that you’re dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping. This realization is one of the sore discouragements of our century […] You cannot meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous events that you hadn’t counted on in other, remote parts. If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand […] the whole system. […] Intervening is a way of causing trouble." (Lewis Thomas, "The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher", 1974)

"I find it more difficult, but also much more fun, to get the right answer by indirect reasoning and before all the evidence is in. It’s what a theoretician does in science. But the conclusions drawn in this way are obviously more risky than those drawn by direct measurement, and most scientists withhold judgment until there is more direct evidence available. The principal function of such detective work - apart from entertaining the theoretician - is probably to so annoy and enrage the observationalists that they are forced, in a fury of disbelief, to perform the critical measurements." (Carl Sagan, "The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective", 1975)

"Human language is a vehicle of truth but also of error, deception, and nonsense. Its use, as in the present discussion, thus requires great prudence. One can improve the precision of language by explicit definition of the terms used. But this approach has its limitations: the definition of one term involves other terms, which should in turn be defined, and so on. Mathematics has found a way out of this infinite regression: it bypasses the use of definitions by postulating some logical relations (called axioms) between otherwise undefined mathematical terms. Using the mathematical terms introduced with the axioms, one can then define new terms and proceed to build mathematical theories. Mathematics need, not, in principle rely on a human language. It can use, instead, a formal presentation in which the validity of a deduction can be checked mechanically and without risk of error or deception." (David Ruelle,"The Mathematician's Brain", 2007)

Technology is the result of antifragility, exploited by risk-takers in the form of tinkering and trial and error, with nerd-driven design confined to the backstage." (Nassim N Taleb, "Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder", 2012)

"This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is risky, that it is a bad thing - and that eliminating randomness is done by eliminating randomness. Randomness is distributed rather than concentrated." (Nassim N Taleb, "Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder", 2012)