"He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass"
About this Quote
Fortune-telling has never sounded so painful, and that’s the point. Fiedler, an economist known for making prediction part of his public brand, lands this line like a warning label on the entire forecasting industry: build your life around the crystal ball and you will eventually be forced to swallow the shards of your own certainty. The joke is dark, but the target is practical - not mysticism so much as the seductive professionalism of “I can see what’s next.”
The intent is to puncture a culture that treats forecasts as authority rather than as provisional guesses. Crystal balls promise clean narratives: a single curve, a tidy recession call, a confident timeline. Reality arrives messier, with shocks, feedback loops, political decisions, and human panic. When the forecast breaks, the forecaster doesn’t just lose accuracy; they lose credibility, status, and often livelihood. “Ground glass” is reputational damage made tactile.
The subtext is also self-aware. Coming from an economist, it reads as both confession and critique: the market for predictions rewards boldness and punishes hedging, even though hedging is intellectually honest. Media incentives amplify this. A nuanced probability distribution doesn’t book well on TV; a crisp prediction does. Fiedler’s line exposes the perverse bargain: you’re paid in attention for certainty today, then charged in humiliation tomorrow.
Contextually, it’s a Cold War-to-globalization era reminder that macroeconomics is not physics. Forecasting is necessary, but mistaking it for clairvoyance is how professionals end up chewing glass.
The intent is to puncture a culture that treats forecasts as authority rather than as provisional guesses. Crystal balls promise clean narratives: a single curve, a tidy recession call, a confident timeline. Reality arrives messier, with shocks, feedback loops, political decisions, and human panic. When the forecast breaks, the forecaster doesn’t just lose accuracy; they lose credibility, status, and often livelihood. “Ground glass” is reputational damage made tactile.
The subtext is also self-aware. Coming from an economist, it reads as both confession and critique: the market for predictions rewards boldness and punishes hedging, even though hedging is intellectually honest. Media incentives amplify this. A nuanced probability distribution doesn’t book well on TV; a crisp prediction does. Fiedler’s line exposes the perverse bargain: you’re paid in attention for certainty today, then charged in humiliation tomorrow.
Contextually, it’s a Cold War-to-globalization era reminder that macroeconomics is not physics. Forecasting is necessary, but mistaking it for clairvoyance is how professionals end up chewing glass.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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