Risk has been defined as the simple fact that more things can happen than will happen. That definition has always appealed to me because it strips away the drama and leaves us with something unavoidable: uncertainty. Not danger. Not chaos. Just the reality that the future contains multiple possible outcomes, only some of which will come to pass and few of which we can predict with any degree of certainty.
Listen to today’s commentary — from markets to geopolitics to technology — and you would think we are living in an unprecedented age of uncertainty. Investors are told the world has become unusually unpredictable. Business leaders are warned that the old rules no longer apply. Commentators speak as if the ground beneath us has suddenly turned unstable.
I’m not convinced.
