[Ulrich] suspects that the given order of things is not as solid as it pretends to be; no thing, no self, no form, no principle, is safe, everything is undergoing an invisible but ceaseless transformation, the unsettled holds more of the future than the settled, and the present is nothing but a hypothesis that has not yet been surmounted. (Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities: Volume I)
The future is not something up ahead or later on, but better understood as present prospection. As in: trying to predict the future is the current mess we’re in. One implication is that to predict the future is to insist that the present messes can be managed in differently.
The notion that what will save us ahead has yet to be invented misses the more policy-relevant point that pulling out a good mess or forestalling a bad mess or taking on different messes today is also a way to change tomorrow. The only place the future is more or less reliable is now, and only if we are managing our messes, now.
This also means that the microeconomic concepts of stable opportunity costs, tradeoffs and priorities, along with price as a coordinating mechanism make sense–if they make sense–only now or in the very short term when the resource to be allocated and alternatives forgone are their clearest.
So what? Such is why a risk estimate must never be confused with being a prediction, i.e., if the risk is left unattended, failure is a matter of time. But is your failure scenario detailed enough to identify and detail conditions for cause and effect upon which prediction is founded? Without such a scenario, you cannot assume more uncertainty means more risk; it may mean only more uncertainty over your estimate of risk.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 