I listened to a friend’s prediction about the direction of the economy. He’s certain we’re heading into a deep recession. When we’ve faced dynamics like today’s, certain things happened that led to a deep recession. Because those things happened before, he’s certain they’ll happen again.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m not comfortable with my friend’s approach. Everything he knows for certain is about the past. The current environment might be similar, but it isn’t exactly the same. It’s not a certainty that the future will play out just as the past did. I believe the past repeating itself is one of a variety of possible outcomes. We could go into a deep recession, but various other outcomes are also possible because factors are at play today that didn’t exist in the past. Each of these possible outcomes has some probability of occurring. Stating with certainty that a particular outcome will happen ignores that fact.

The world is full of randomness. Anything can happen.