Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the
statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and
supporting your position, you should consider ways the statement might or
might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

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Throughout history, the impact of learning from past experiences has remained controversial. In that context, one school of thought claims that past experiences are ineffective in the decision-making process due to the fact that "the new" is unpredictable and impossible to be foreseen by its definition. Acknowledging that not all aberrant conditions can be predicted with total certainty, however, I do not completely agree with the statement since the know-how acquired through experiences can act on today's situations.

The statement attempts to undermine the importance of the past by fallaciously assuming that current decisions require unseen perspectives that cannot be derived from historical knowledge. The supporters of this claim may point out what is so-called Black swan events. Initially suggested by Nassim Taleb, the black swan events can be described as rare but high-impact events that cannot be estimated beforehand by their nature like contagious diseases. Being one of the recent examples, coronavirus can be perceived as a black swan event since it was neither predictable by any statistical model before it spread substantially nor trivial enough to handle without effort. Admittedly, coronavirus and many other looming crises are impossible to detect in the regular pace of life. Nevertheless, this does not imply that we are defenseless in terms of contending with the aftermath of these events. In fact, knowledge and expertise acquired through time could lessen the time to combat the negative effects of the black swan events. For example, vaccine development for coronavirus took a year compared to approximately 25 years to develop a vaccine for the Spanish Flu, thanks to the expertise gained through past studies about MERS and SARS. Specifically, previous research into these diseases has helped determine potential solutions for COVID-19 using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. Thus, one can dispute the argument by mentioning that know-how can lead to better decision-making that can ameliorate the effects of black swan events.

Past experiences do not only provide value in the context of crises but also apply to individuals' daily decision-making processes. In contrast to the statement, we can see how cognitive psychologists' definition requires the decision-maker combines experience and innate dispositions to act. Basic researches in cognitive psychology suggest that decisions depend on mental schemas that can be described as the representative models of individuals' cognition. It is worth noting that these mental models shape through individuals' interaction with their environment, in other words, through experience. This does not necessarily conclude that the sole determinant of the decision is past experience. In fact, the individual differences in mental maps of people are attributed to biological and genetic dispositions combined with the environment. To exemplify, imagine a college student who is struggling to determine the field of study for university. My personal experience provided me with the thought that this student will most likely try to choose a field in which he or she has both talent and interest. In this case, one can interpret "talent" as the effect of nature whereas "interest" is the result of experiences. To reflect on my own experience, I can mention that I had a tendency to comprehend abstract themes easily but I was terrible at linguistics. This shaped my decision to prioritize quantitative departments. Then based on my past observations, I realized that I do not have any interest in working at the hospital and carrying the stress of dealing with human life. Hence, I finalized my decision and preferred engineering.

In conclusion, there are situations, such as the effect of biological dispositions on mental schemas, in which the claim is true and useful. However, provided that the past collection of knowledge and expertise can provide strategies for the future, the truth of the claim is limited.