Over the last century or so, science has made immense progress in understanding natural phenomena like the weather and social phenomena like markets and economics. Unfortunately, we still fall well short of being able to successfully predict their behaviour. In spite of the mindboggling leaps in knowledge and computing horsepower, systematically successful prediction continues to elude us. This is largely due to the difficulty in modelling complex systems in sufficient detail. An aspect of this problem, called “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” might well be altogether insurmountable. Continue reading →