The error of confirmation (IM 825)

In most cases, our past events and experiences shape how we decide for the future. We treat memory like evidence and familiarity like certainty.

This can be one of the biggest errors we repeat every day.

The world is dynamic. Predicting the future by extending the past is often a losing bet—not because the past is useless, but because it is incomplete. It captures what happened under old conditions, old incentives, and old constraints. When the conditions change, the conclusion can become wrong while still feeling “proven.”

Take the coronavirus pandemic. Few expected an event like that to reshape the world in the 21st century, despite massive advances in technology, science, and medicine. The lesson is not that progress is fake—it is that reality can still disrupt our assumptions.

Look at the economy and markets. Bitcoin reached around $40,000 (at the time of writing). Its earlier history could not guarantee that outcome. The same is true for Tesla. Ten years ago, very few would have predicted it would become one of the most valuable companies, or that Elon Musk would become the richest person in the world—adding over $100 billion in 2020 alone.

The point is simple: past experience does not confirm the future. It only informs it. When we confuse “what happened before” with “what must happen next,” we stop observing the present. We stop updating our beliefs. We become confident for the wrong reason. The discipline is to treat the past as data, not destiny—and to keep revising when the world changes.