Cats Cradle

​I’m not very good at predicting the future.

I’d say my mean is somewhere near the mean of likely-random guesses.

Which suggests that any explanation that I have for past events is delusional. This is just the process of forcing a hypothesis onto cherry-picked memory points, and then avidly avoiding all testing of the model.

So all that I really know is that I don’t know anything when it comes to predicting the future or explaining the past.

Which is in itself pretty useful because it gives me a leg up on the competition.

However, when it comes to discussing the outcomes of schooling choices for your daughter with a co-parent who confidently explains the past and predicts the future, things get more complicated.

How do I tell her that she is far more likely to be wrong than right, but her guess is as good as anyone’s? That’d confuse her, and she already thinks I’m mad or bad, or both.

Me, in the absence of reliable foresight, I pump for convenience over conniptions.