I read his 'Fooled by randomness' book. Nothing original there. All this stuff about fat-tails, extreme outliers, chaos theory etc has been done much better by others many years ago.
There is nothing of practical importance there. Of the other points you made :
1. I would be the last person to be accused of using the past to predict the future. I am the quintessential investor. My outlook is prospective. Everything I do is about devining future developments, demographics and discounting those factors. If anyone was to be accused of peeking and data mining, it would be the charts/waves/chicken entrails brigade.
2. Did I predict the advent of globalisation, wireless internet etc 25 years ago ? No. I did however grasp its significance early enough to adapt. Someone quoted Maynard Keynes earlier on this thread. 100% correct. 'When the facts change, I change my opinion'
3. Of what practical importance is to plan for unforeseeable events ? Very little. For all you know, if we get some sort of post-nuclear apocalypse, we'll all be equally stuffed regardless of how well we planned. The only winners could be some mutated bacteria. It is best to plan for the probable. This means that for the foreseeable future, 90% of the economy will be conducted in a manner similar to what we know. There will be banks. There will be insurance companies. There will be farming. There will be transport. There will be Schools, Hospitals etc etc etc.
