Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation. Richard Dawkins
About This Quote

The quote which is “Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off.” The words are “Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business”, but the meaning of the quote is “Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business”. The prediction itself is about the complex world. It's an expression about how complicated things are, and how uncertain even the simplest decisions can be.

The quote was written by Stephen Jay Gould who was an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. Gould was also an acclaimed writer on science.

Source: The Selfish Gene

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