Monday, September 10, 2012

Therefore no wherefore

Today's post is a quick idea:

Whenever we're unsure about what will happen in the future, we don't really understand the past or present. Whatever information we lack that makes the future uncertain is the same kind of information we lack to make certain sense of the past or present. For example, if we don't know which way the stock market will move tomorrow because we lack some information about the market, then we also don't know why the stock market moved whichever way it did today because of that same lack of information.

Hindsight gives us the answer of what has happened, but it doesn't tell us why, no matter how compelling a concocted why may be. To understand why something has happened, you must've been able to predict it—else you're only guessing.

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