Popper's falsificationism is intimately connected to the notion of an open society. An open society is one in which no permanent truth is held to exist; this would allow counter ideas to emerge. Karl Popper shared ideas with his friend, the low key economist [Friedrich] Von Hayek who endorsed capitalism as a state in which prices can disseminate information that bureucratic socialism would choke. Both notions of falsificationism and open society are, counterintuitively, connected to those of a rigorous method for handling randomness in my day job as a trader. Clearly an open mind is a necessity when dealing with randomness. Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed owing to the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion of a good model for society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian. I learned from Popper, in addition to the difference between an open and a closed society, that between an open and closed mind.

NOBODY IS PERFECT

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb