Despite this constant free flow of information … we are caught unaware as one crisis after another devastates the financial markets.

The temptation is to think that information and openness will enable us to risk and eliminate market crisis.  As plausible as this position is on the surface, I believe it is wrong.  I suspect our problem is not too little information; rather, we may be at the point where we have too much.In the rigorous world of mathematics or the path of deterministic physical systems, we find that, if we dig deep enough, every analysis rests on assumptions. We can not necessarily know or verify these assumptions, but they must be accepted as true in order to establish a foundation for our inquiry.

In other words, the progress of knowledge is framed not only by what we know, but also gaining a better understanding of what we cannot know.

From  A Demon of Our Own Design by Richard Bookstaber

HKO comment:

On Wall Street a philosophical understanding of risk was replaced by delusional certainty.

Success is less determined by who has the most knowledge than by those who can quickly discern the most relevant knowledge and quickly dispose of information that is more distractive than instructive.

It is better to know the odds than the truth.

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