Throughout Eastern Europe, the unexpected and irrevocable fall of communism that began in the late 1980s presented enormous challenges in the spheres of politics and society, as well as at the level of individual experience. Excitement, uncertainty, and fear predicated the shaping of a new order, the outcome of which was anything but predetermined. Recent studies have focused on the ambivalent impact of capitalism. Yet, at the time, parliamentary democracy had equally few traditions to return to, and membership in the European Union was a distant dream at best. Nowadays, as new threats arise, Europe’s current political crises prompt us to reconsider how liberal democracy in Eastern Europe came about in the first place. This book undertakes an analysis of the year 1990 in several countries throughout Europe to consider the role of uncertainty and change in shaping political nations.

Risk and uncertainty may sound scary, but todays best business leaders are navigating both to gain strategic advantage over competitorsand you can, too. This guide for business leaders examines risk and opportunity through the lens of some of the worlds most respected visionaries, including Howard Schultz, Andy Grove, Peter Huntsman, John Krafcik, Peter Leibinger, Doug Hepper, and many more. These visionaries looked beyond financial performance to see opportunitiesand they did so by understanding uncertainty. Then, they decisively acted to create measurable results that coincided with the future they envisioned. Find out how they did it, and learn how to: identify, define, and convert uncertainty into value; become more opportunistic when facing uncertainty; develop the skill to spot where advantages are likely to emerge; and create an environment where managers and leaders complement each other. Filled with case studies on companies such as Hyundai, Starbucks, Roche, and Intel, this guide delivers proven ways to create value and leverage uncertainty. It is the culmination of a decade of research and interaction with dozens of companies and growth leaders who prove that pursuing a market driven strategy to navigating uncertainty will gain measurable market advantage.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 DONNER PRIZE “The Next Age of Uncertainty combines invaluable historical insights with provocative reflections on the economy of the future—a must read.” —Thomas d’Aquino C.M., LL.D., founding CEO of the Business Council of Canada, and author of Private Power Public Purpose From the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, a far-seeing guide to the powerful economic forces that will shape the decades ahead. The economic ground is shifting beneath our feet. The world is becoming more volatile, and people are understandably worried about their financial futures. In this urgent and accessible guide to the crises and opportunities that lie ahead, economist and former Governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz maps out the powerful tectonic forces that are shaping our future and the ideas that will allow us to master them. These forces include an aging workforce, mounting debt, and rising income inequality. Technological advances, too, are adding to the pressure, putting people out of work, and climate change is forcing a transition to a lower-carbon economy. It is no surprise that people are feeling uncertain. The implications of these tectonic tensions will cascade throughout every dimension of our lives—the job market, the housing market, the investment climate, as well as government and central bank policy, and the role of the corporation within society. The pandemic has added momentum to many of them. Poloz skillfully argues that past crises, from the Victorian Depression in the late 1800s to the more recent downturn in 2008, give a hint of what is in store for us in the decades ahead. Unlike the purely destructive power of earthquakes, the upheaval that is sure to come in the decades ahead will offer unexpected opportunities for renewal and growth. Filled with takeaways for employers, investors, and policymakers, as well as families discussing jobs and mortgage renewals around the kitchen table, The Next Age of Uncertainty is an indispensable guide for those navigating the fault lines of the risky world ahead.

An examination of the cognitive tools that the mind uses to grapple with uncertainty in the real world. How do humans navigate uncertainty, continuously making near-effortless decisions and predictions even under conditions of imperfect knowledge, high complexity, and extreme time pressure? Taming Uncertainty argues that the human mind has developed tools to grapple with uncertainty. Unlike much previous scholarship in psychology and economics, this approach is rooted in what is known about what real minds can do. Rather than reducing the human response to uncertainty to an act of juggling probabilities, the authors propose that the human cognitive system has specific tools for dealing with different forms of uncertainty. They identify three types of tools: simple heuristics, tools for information search, and tools for harnessing the wisdom of others. This set of strategies for making predictions, inferences, and decisions constitute the mind's adaptive toolbox. The authors show how these three dimensions of human decision making are integrated and they argue that the toolbox, its cognitive foundation, and the environment are in constant flux and subject to developmental change. They demonstrate that each cognitive tool can be analyzed through the concept of ecological rationality—that is, the fit between specific tools and specific environments. Chapters deal with such specific instances of decision making as food choice architecture, intertemporal choice, financial uncertainty, pedestrian navigation, and adolescent behavior.

"Exhaustively detailed yet eminently readable, this is an important book."Publishers Weekly, starred review "Cassidy does not so much exculpate Heisenberg as explain him, with a transparency that makes this biography a pleasure to read."Los Angeles Times "Well crafted and readable . . . [Cassidy] provides a nuanced and compelling account of Heisenberg's life."The Harvard Book Review In 1992, David C. Cassidy’s groundbreaking biography of Werner Heisenberg, Uncertainty, was published to resounding acclaim from scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in the Playbill of the Broadway production of Copenhagen, referred to it as one of his main sources and “the standard work in English.” Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atom Bomb) called it “the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist,” and the Los Angeles Times praised it as “an important book. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg’s actions.” No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty, now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, times, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime. David C. Cassidy is the author of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century, Einstein and Our World, and Uncertainty.

This book presents a philosophical approach to probability and probabilistic thinking, considering the underpinnings of probabilistic reasoning and modeling, which effectively underlie everything in data science. The ultimate goal is to call into question many standard tenets and lay the philosophical and probabilistic groundwork and infrastructure for statistical modeling. It is the first book devoted to the philosophy of data aimed at working scientists and calls for a new consideration in the practice of probability and statistics to eliminate what has been referred to as the "Cult of Statistical Significance." The book explains the philosophy of these ideas and not the mathematics, though there are a handful of mathematical examples. The topics are logically laid out, starting with basic philosophy as related to probability, statistics, and science, and stepping through the key probabilistic ideas and concepts, and ending with statistical models. Its jargon-free approach asserts that standard methods, such as out-of-the-box regression, cannot help in discovering cause. This new way of looking at uncertainty ties together disparate fields — probability, physics, biology, the “soft” sciences, computer science — because each aims at discovering cause (of effects). It broadens the understanding beyond frequentist and Bayesian methods to propose a Third Way of modeling.

Author of the acclaimed work Iceberg Risk: An Adventure in Portfolio Theory, Kent Osband argues that uncertainty is central rather than marginal to finance. Markets don't trade mainly on changes in risk. They trade on changes in beliefs about risk, and in the process, markets unite, stretch, and occasionally defy beliefs. Recognizing this truth would make a world of difference in investing. Belittling uncertainty has created a rift between financial theory and practice and within finance theory itself, misguiding regulation and stoking huge financial imbalances. Sparking a revolution in the mindset of the investment professional, Osband recasts the market as a learning machine rather than a knowledge machine. The market continually errs, corrects itself, and makes new errors. Respecting that process, without idolizing it, will promote wiser investment, trading, and regulation. With uncertainty embedded at its core, Osband's rational approach points to a finance theory worthy of twenty-first-century investing.