Stop Forecasting. Start Verifying.
“Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb’s point is simple: probability is what you lean on when you’re operating under ignorance.
Most traders live there.
They forecast.
They interpret.
They “give it room.”
They tolerate ambiguity and hope time resolves it in their favor. Their methods assume they cannot know what’s happening in real time, so they stretch the trade horizon and outsource clarity to indicators, narratives, and patience.
My approach is the opposite.
I’m not trying to predict a future state of the market.
I’m trying to observe a present mechanism and act only when it prints.
From Prediction to Verification
Most trading is “probability as prediction”:
I think it will go up because…
This indicator suggests…
The macro backdrop implies…
That’s not wrong — it’s just bounded by ignorance. You’re placing a bet into a wide set of possible outcomes.
My method is “probability as verification”:
If the tape prints an opportunity, I engage.
If it doesn’t, I don’t.
If it starts to fail, it fails quickly.
This is why I’m less bounded by probability than traditional approaches: I shrink the space where uncertainty can harm me.
Fast Invalidation Changes Everything
Most strategies absorb uncertainty by holding longer.
Mine rejects uncertainty by falsifying faster.
When the signature is wrong, it becomes obvious quickly:
timing decay shows up,
follow-through doesn’t appear,
speed collapses the wrong way.
That matters because fast invalidation means:
smaller exposure to the unknown,
less reliance on long-horizon probabilities,
more reliance on real-time verification.
This is also why I don’t rely on standard indicators.
Indicators estimate.
They are indirect.
They lag.
My reads are direct: that’s closer to observing the mechanism itself than sampling a proxy.
Quantifying the Reduction in Uncertainty
If you want to quantify how much this compresses “probability dependence,” you can measure uncertainty directly.
A coin flip is maximum uncertainty.
As win probability increases, uncertainty drops sharply:
90% win rate → ~53% less uncertainty
93% win rate → ~63% less uncertainty
95% win rate → ~71% less uncertainty
That’s not “being lucky more often.”
That’s what happens when you shift from forecasting to a tight execution framework where the market must reveal itself inside constrained windows — and where wrongness is exposed fast.
The Real Point
The goal is to stop gambling inside ignorance.
So instead of “accepting uncertainty and managing it,” I reduce uncertainty by design:
short windows, direct signals, fast falsification, real-time verification.
In other words: most traders are pricing dice.