Stuffed turkey in the oven is the star of many families’ tables during the Christmas and New Year celebrations. But it could serve not only as a contribution to a pleasant time spent with the family, but also as a reminder of the interesting paradox of the turkey proposed by the British philosopher, mathematician and writer Bertrand Russell, and taken up by the Lebanese researcher Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan (The Influence of the Very Improbable).

The credibility paradigm

Consider the turkey that is fed every day, each time it is fed its conviction grows that the general rule of life is that it is fed every day by human beings “who look out for its interests.” until one day before the party, when an unforeseen event occurs that forces him to change his beliefs.

Puran could never have imagined that his life would end in such a tragic and sudden way; much less be able to predict it. Because he was completely engrossed in his routine, he was wrong to think that the direction of his life would change, considering that his view was to have a great life with little chance of being interrupted.

The case of the turkey can be generalized to any situation in life: it is very easy to assume that what has worked so far continues to happen, without understanding that everything we have is temporary, since the world is constantly changing and, therefore, we can never to be absolutely sure what is true until it works. It illustrates our tendency to develop beliefs about certain subjects, to draw conclusions that are often false based on a limited number of our own observations and the opinions of those who make up our immediate world.

Avoiding failure… inexorably involves learning from the turkey metaphor.

Puran also illustrates the fragility of the stability he lives in, just as we live in a very fragile political, economic, technological, environmental and social environment that can change at any moment.

The insights that can be derived from the payment paradox are powerful for living and operating in a world that is little understood: never try to predict the future by looking only at the past, embrace uncertainty so that change does not overwhelm you, remember that the future will become less and less predictable, address attention to those events that can have very negative effects on your activity or business, no matter how small they may be, so that you anticipate their effects and always be ready for rapid changes and experiments, organize yourself internally to have an organization that resists drastic changes.

It is also crucial to improve the ability to draw the right conclusions when considering the events that occur. For this to happen, it is necessary to question assumptions and beliefs, not to believe everything you see or hear at first, to contrast the opinions of different people, to resort to the best existing knowledge and solid data and reliable sources, to use analysis methods. and justify the conclusions.

Avoiding personal, business and political failure in 2024 inexorably involves learning from the turkey metaphor. (OR)