It is moronic to predict, without first establishing and error rate for a prediction and keeping track of one's past record of accuracy - Taleb, Fooled By Randomness.
There is a huge pile of confusion are Taleb and his actual message. Let's take this simple message as a starting point. If you predict the future without also defined the error band AND the confidence level - say a 95% confidence and a 5% error - then you're wasting your time.
This is absolutley butt simple statistical process control - high school statistics. Simple things like Student-T - how many samples do I need for a 95% confidence and a 5% error rate.
Why is this not understood? My answer? It's the failure of the public school system. Or the students were sleeping in the High School system.
