1) In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a princess of the legendary city of Troy, and the most beautiful of King Priam’s daughters. She was seduced by Apollo, who gave her the ability to predict the future.
2) When she refused herself to him, he cursed her by making people disbelieve her predictions. So she went around knowing and predicting the future, telling people what was going to happen, but no one ever believed her.
3) She foresaw the fall of Troy, but couldn’t prevent it. Cassandra is a figure both of sagacity and of tragedy, where her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the paradoxical condition of mankind.
4) In her frightened, ego-less state, she may blurt out what she sees, perhaps with the unconscious hope that others might be able to make some sense of it. But to them, her words sound meaningless, disconnected, and blown out of all proportion.
5) Cassandra has become the archetype for many prophetic characters who are either ignored or cannot be comprehended until after an unfortunate event has occurred.
6) The dilemma facing investors is that there are too many Cassandras’ who have been faithfully foretelling, since The Great Recession, that that we will *soon* start a steady erosion that will scar the life of anyone invested on the wrong side.
7) Their catastrophic predictions of “The Great Crash” or “The Big Reset” over the past decade were because of ideologically motivated cognition. In a world full of ambiguity, we see what we want to see.
8) Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman has found that confidence in ones beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence, but of the coherence of the story that the mind constructs.
9) What should be important is that we are agnostic in our analysis, rather than ideological; and empirical, rather than dogmatic. But as social psychologist Leon Festinger, observed, “people cognize and interpret information to fit what they already believe.”
10) The truth is, to quote @dylangrice, “The future is always uncertain, it is only the extent of our self-deception that changes over time.” Be free of speculative prejudices.
11) Pessimism is seductive but do not believe in prophecies. The best guide is to expect the opposite of whatever now reigns in the public consciousness. To quote Homer, "Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed."
