Expect 2018 to Be More Sane? Sorry, It’s Not Going to Happen - The New York Times

Closing Nate Silver quote: "“So I do think people are now realizing the world is less predictable than we thought it was,” Mr. Silver said. “But in some ways that’s a return to normal.”"

"Just a few years ago, there was a dawning sense that technology would give us a peek around the corner. Thanks to reams of information — sensors and surveillance everywhere, and computing capacity to make sense of it all — it looked as if we were entering a “Minority Report”-type world, where much of the future could be foretold in our numbers. Google could predict flu trends, election-stats nerds could predict political outcomes, and predictive policing algorithms were going to give us a handle on crime.

Yet what has happened is rather quite different. Instead of revealing unseen order and predictability in the world, technology has unleashed a cascade of forces that have made the world more volatile — and thus made the future hazier and more open to out-of-the-blue results."

Expect 2018 to Be More Sane? Sorry, It’s Not Going to Happen - The New York Times