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Human behavior is too complex to be predictable

Updated Mar 28 2025

When we say that human behavior is unpredictable, we are right, because it is too complex to be predicted, especially by ourselves. Our intense sensation of internal liberty, as Spinoza acutely saw, comes from the fact that the ideas and images which we have of ourselves are much cruder and sketchier than the detailed complexity of what is happening within us. We are the source of amazement in our own eyes. —Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

More simply put:

What do you get when you have a storytelling animal with a very limited capacity to perceive life as it really is? You get a lot of things happening in ways that the creature did not expect, because none of their mental stories told them to anticipate it happening in that way. And then probably telling a bunch of stories about what happened which don’t truly reflect reality. —Caitlin Johnstone, Revolution, Awakening, And Leaving Abusive Relationships All Happen In Unexpected Ways

Alternately: nature might only be “complex” in relation to the impossible task of translating it into linear signs.