In a fast-moving world, pay extremely close attention to the things that never change. Everyone loves change because it is thrilling and unexpected. History is defined by how people think, behave, and are persuaded.
“History never repeats itself, but man always does,” said Voltaire. Reading the future is hard. Every century presents entirely new challenges. But the way humans think and react to them has changed very little. We're just as easily influenced by common vices - fear, greed, scarcity and tribalism.
Learning to notice the behaviours that have consistently appeared in history and played a role in all the major moments is the closest you can come to seeing the future. You still don't know what will happen, but you find certainty in human motivation and the natural consequences.
Small risks compound into big ones. But tiny hazards are easier to ignore, therefore big risks are constantly underestimated.
The Soviets created a nuke 1,500-times-stronger than Hiroshima.
The Tsar Bomba was ten times more powerful than all conventional bombs dropped during WWII. Its fireball was visible 600 miles away in Russia. Its mushroom cloud soared 42 miles.
The nuclear bomb ended WWII. Within a decade, the US and the USSR had weapons capable of destroying the entire planet.
Because these bombs were so lethal, countries were reluctant to deploy them in battle. Why bother wiping out an enemy's capital city when they'll do the same to you in 60 seconds?
By 1960, we had found a work-around - less lethal nukes. One, Davy Crocket, was 650 times less powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and could be fired by one person. We made backpack-sized nuclear landmines with shoebox-sized warheads.
Little nukes felt safer, more responsible. However, t hey were also more likely to be employed in conflict. They reduced the threshold for acceptable use.
Big hazards are simple to overlook because they are a series of tiny events that can be easily dismissed. So people always undervalue significant risks.
No one anticipated the Great Depression in 1929. If you said the stock market would fall 90% and unemployment soar to 25% in 1929, you'd be laughed out of town.
Nobody was smug. In the late 1920s, the stock market was overvalued, and farm maintenance was lacking. It was clear. It was well-known. It came up. But who cares? Those aren't huge issues in isolation.
What triggered the Great Depression was all of these factors developing at once, each issue fuelling the next fire.
Consistently, the world has fallen apart in some way roughly every decade. Sometimes the breakages are localised, and occasionally on different scales, but they're remarkably consistent. Because they're so rare, and just beyond the horizon of each generation's recent memory, it's easy to believe they won't happen again. It's easy to fall back into old habits. But inevitably, chickens come home to roost. The high-probability events which previously flew under the radar combine and multiply.
