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.
Beyond Graffiti: Mural by Richard Bagguley.
This conundrum belongs to Titus Lucretius Carus, a Roman philosopher born a century before Christ and known for the iconic poem ‘On the Nature of Things’ – De rerum natura. He 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.
‘On the Nature of Things’ was lost when Black Death spread across Europe in the Middle Ages, but a copy turned up unexpectedly in Germany thanks to Poggio Bracciolini, the Italian Renaissance scholar who devoted his life to recovering classical manuscripts decaying in ancient monasteries. In finding the misplaced De rerum natura, the Lucretius Problem was back on man’s in-tray.
The Lucretius Problem Supersized
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. The same applies to a tree or a man. With all things, the largest – whatever it is – that a man has ever seen, he views as prodigious, unbeatable. 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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Lovely article. I think you are trying to tell us to be prepared for further shocks on the news, especially after 20 January, 2025.
More to the point is why do people vote for” populists “ when there is ample evidence that they are rarely right in the long run ? More when we meet on Friday ..
After you warn us that “we ain’t seen nothing yet” you end with Happy New Year…
If we are to enjoy life in the moment we have to be ignorantly optimistic as the reality for the future does look pretty grim…
Thank you Clifford for using my mural for your blog and the link to my web site, I will pay back the fiver I owe you.
Bless you, Happy New Year !!!
That year when records began: it must have been a real stinker, and yet also the best ever.
“Lucretius believed that ‘the nature of the gods is an utter lack of interest in humans and their affairs.’ ”
Update: ‘the nature of Billionaires is an utter lack of interest in humans and their affairs.’ ”
The interesting aspect of the worst event, is that we are witness them through the TV news, and even more so on social media. How does this affect us?
I remember 1997 (approx) seeing the Serbian concentration camps and starved people in the Yugoslavian war. I thought after the endless education of the 1940’s Holocaust, the ‘world’ would have descended on those camps and said “Stop! We don’t do this now!” But it still took a while for things to end and be solved.
The ice caps melt every year (and the is replenished in the winter), that is the source of most mountain streams during the spring and the summer. Only every year there is a big fanfare about this because it convinced the lemmings that climate crisis is real. Just like the European rewilding scheme has destroyed over 400 dams and weirs in Spain, 100 in Murcia alone but there is no mention of this on the news during the Spanish floods. Equally there was no mention the massive Tonga undersea volcanic eruption which vaporised millions of gallons of water sending it into the atmosphere and is predicted to affect global weather conditions until 2030.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/06/tonga-volcanic-eruption-could-cause-unusual-weather-for-rest-of-decade#:~:text=Our%20findings%20show%20the%20volcano,weather%20for%20years%20to%20come.
Happy carbon tax net zero decimation of industry surveillance new year.
There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years.
One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.
“Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.
“Maybe,” the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.
“How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.
“Maybe,” replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.
“Maybe,” answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbours congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.
“Maybe,” said the farmer.
We always have to be philosophical about how things will turn out.
500 years ago at this time of year in London, we’d probably be trundling down to a River Thames frost fair and maybe engage in a little skating.
A few years from now and Chelsea might be looking more like Venice and we’ll be dashing around on e-boats (doesn’t sound quite right!)
The fact is, in our short stay on Earth we have been lucky to live in a remarkably stable environment. The impact of climate change could worsen things yet and in a short time we experience violent extremes that have never been known before – by then, Lucretius’s problem may not matter that much.
One constant is that humanity has always been kept in a state of “maybe’s” and never quite knowing what’s round the corner that we must live in a blind optimism of “hoping for the best” and pray that anything worse will hold off for another year, at least.
Just maybe…
Very philosophical, everyone should read it.
I find it difficult to say I am glad ‘The Lucretius Problem’ landed in my ‘in-tray.’ My country is on the verge of committing crimes against humanity by rounding up long-suffering and hardworking refugees and herding them into concentration camps. Will this be worse than the Holocaust? I certainly hope not! But that such a terrible thing being perpetrated on real human beings, whose only crime is to have been born into a poor country, is not a nightmare from the past, but the reality of our here and now makes the horror of it exponentially worse than any atrocity from a past we never knew except for history books. All I can do is to hope, Titus Lucretius Caras was indeed right, and things can only get better. If I were to believe such a thing, I would do well to change my name to Pollyanna…
I wish this was pessimistic