On Takatoshi Kato's predictions / suit-and-tie-wearing hotshots

"These were days before I decided to climb up the mountain, speak slowly and in a priestly tone, and try shaming people rather than insulting them. Listening to Kato's presentation, I could not control myself and flew into a rage in front of two thousand Koreans – I was so angry that I almost started shouting in French, forgetting that I was in Korea. I ran to the podium and told the audience that the next time someone in a suit and tie gave them projections for some dates in the future, they should ask him to show what he had projected in the past – in this case, what he had been forecasting for 2008 and 2009 (the crisis years) two to five years earlier, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. They would then verify that highly Venerable Kato-san and his colleagues are, to put it mildly, not very good at this predictionizing business. And it is not just Mr. Kato: our track record in figuring out significant rare events in politics and economics is not so close to zero; it is zero."

"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 Geaorge 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), deeming such behavior to be unbecoming of the wise member of the intelligentsia I was supposed to be. 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.
All I hear is complaints about forecasters, when the next step is obvious yet rarely taken: avoidance of iatrogenics from forecasting. We understand childproofing, but not forecaster-hubris-proofing."

The financier Warren Buffett states that he tries to invest in businesses that are "so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will."
Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile