Mark Vernon reports on religious comment at the Hay Festival, and notes that there was a bit of a common theme of uncertainty. He notes talks by Karen Armstrong, whose books I really like, David Eagleman, whose amazing little book Sum (forty tales about the afterlife) was one of the best books I read last year, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Vernon asks why Taleb is committed to the religious practices of his native Greek Orthodoxy, and writes:
“Take the economic crash of 2008, the event that he famously anticipated (not predicted: in extremistan, the future is always uncertain). If we’d followed the ancient precept not to build up speculative debts, which is to say avoided usurious excesses, the world might be a better place today. Religious practices, Taleb suggested, are the wise product of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom that help us to live better in the face of what’s unknown. At their best (three little words that are important), they build resilience into human society, much as evolution builds robustness into ecosystems. And that’s a professor of risk management talking.”
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