CONCLUSIONHedgehogs, Foxes, and the Dangers of Making Predictions
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
—Archilochos
Within the fragments of ancient Greek poetry found among archaeological remnants was the short but insightful line by the poet Archilochos, quoted here.1 In the 2,700 or so years since those words were written, the distinction between foxes and hedgehogs has been used countless times, perhaps made most recently famous by Isaiah Berlin's entertaining essay titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” which was written in 1953.
Berlin expands on the ancient Greek poet's insight to develop the difference between the ideological hedgehog and generalist fox:
There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, [the hedgehogs] who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel—a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance—and, on the other side, those [the foxes] who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle.2
The basic underlying logic of Boombustology has been that, when it comes to spotting financial bubbles before they burst, it is better to be a fox. Foxes are more suited to attack mysteries. Hedgehogs, with their depth of understanding, ...