Anónimo, grabado del S. XVIII
Fuente: https://www.bridgemanimages.com/
The Lucretius Problem is believing the worst thing that has happened is the worst thing that can happen. In the present age, a ridiculous assumption.
This conundrum belongs to Titus Lucretius Carus, a Roman philosopher born a century before Christ who believed in evolution – things can only get better – and thought the earth was infinite, not a sphere.
With its myriad deities, Lucretius believed that ‘the nature of the gods is an utter lack of interest in humans and their affairs.’ He taught his students that Nature is constantly experimenting, killing off the weak and promoting organisms that have the best chance of survival.
Lucretius wrote: ‘Anyone who has not seen a great river before will think upon seeing one for the first time that none could ever be larger. With all things, the largest – whatever it is – that a man has ever seen, he views as prodigious. Even though all things along with heaven, earth and the oceans are nothing compared to the total sum of the universal whole.’
It is human nature when predicting the worst or best case scenario to cling to the last worst or best that was similar in the past. We have a tendency not to point out that the previous worst-case scenario was even worse than the one before it. This cognitive bias was named the Lucretius Problem by the Lebanese statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an expert on randomness, probability, complexity and uncertainty.
Our experiences shape our expectations. As our experiences are limited, expectation is often overly optimistic. The past is the best predictor of the future. Popularists and dictators usually end up disappointing, betraying, even killing their own citizens, so we should expect that to happen when disillusion with traditional politicians persuades us to elect one. In such a case, the worst case scenario will not be worse than we imagine. It will be worse than we can imagine.
With flash floods, forest fires and ice caps melting at an alarming rate – and clearly growing worse year on year, it would be foolish to abide by the faux premise of the Lucretius Problem, but see it as a warning. The worst thing that has just happened surpassed the worst thing that came before it. Thus, the worst thing that has just happened is going to happen again – and worse.
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