Forecasting as Iatrogenics

Antifragile - Chapter 8, Prediction as a Child of Modernity

What was getting me in that state of anger was my realization that forecasting was not neutral. It is all in the iatrogenics. Forecasting can be downright injurious to risk-takers—no different from giving people snake oil medicine in place of cancer treatment, or bleeding, as in the story of George Washington. And there was evidence. Danny Kahneman—rightfully—kept admonishing me for my fits of anger and outbursts at respectable members of the establishment (respectable for now), unbecoming of the wise member of the intelligentsia I was supposed to have become. Yet he stoked my frustration and sense of outrage the most by showing me the evidence of iatrogenics. There are ample empirical findings to the effect that providing someone with a random numerical forecast increases his risk taking, even if the person knows the projections are random.