Second, we faced the argument that “more technology is invariably better,” a corruption of the notion of progress. In fact, only a small minority of technologies end up sticking; most fail because of some flaw identified over time.
Third, we were told that had ideas such as ours prevailed in the past, they would have hindered risk-taking. Yet, the first rule of risk-taking is to not cross the street blindfolded.
Fourth, toxic financial exposures were deemed to be “safe,” according to primitive risk models. But Fannie Mae went bust exactly because of overconfidence in its bad models (and, incidentally, after its bailout, appears to use the same risk models).