"Let me begin by asserting that the world we live in is not an ergodic world; it is a non-ergodic world. I like the term 'ergodic'. If I say the world is ergodic, I mean that it has stable underlying structure, such that we can develop theory that can be applied time after time consistently. It is very important to understand that the world with which we are concerned is continually changing, is continually novel. That does not mean that there are not ergodic aspects of the world. But we can not develop theory that can be used over and over again and over time. For an enormous number of issues that are important to us, the world is one of novelty and change; it does not repeat itself."
-Douglass North, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Update: The formulation of the above quote was taken from an article in the Royal Statistical Society's Significance Magazine, and is different than the verbatim quote from Douglass North's article I link to above. Though the magazine article is good, North's journal article is one of the best, most thought provoking articles that I have read in some time. It would definitely be worth reading...
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