Black swans

[Skybird]

I'm in the final chapter of a book by Nassim N. Taleb, "The Black Swan". It was a very interesting, mind-reviving reading, with both a solid insight into the author's matter, and an easy, entertaining style of narration, so that the text really pulls you through smoothly and without you much resisting by yourself. The book is about the impact of the random event and the importance of the unpredictable for creating the reality and the world we experience, and explains why the author is sceptical about too much effort put into trying to categorize a world into a structured order when the world probably is too complex anyway to be predicted and understood.

The reason why I found this book so entertaining, and chuckled very often, is simply because it made me thinking about myself a lot. I have to admit that I am somewhat vulnerable to attempts of trying to put the reality i perceive into too tight an order, it oftehn works nicely - until just the next time the strategy fails. So where I chuckled, I did not so much chuckle about an anecdote in the book, but about myself.

I let Wikipedia do the job of giving details about the author, his background, and the book in question. Highly recommended, and if you know a person interested in this kind of literature, maybe a good christmas present!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Taleb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

[jpm1]

AI intelligence'll never be made by human kind cause the life's something imperfect . Who said knowledge was made for us to know everything in the creation :hmm:

[Digital_Trucker]

it oftehn works nicely - until just the next time the strategy fails.

I think you just summed up life in general:up:

[Skybird]

it oftehn works nicely - until just the next time the strategy fails.

I think you just summed up life in general:up:
... and my cooking in special...

[Digital_Trucker]

it oftehn works nicely - until just the next time the strategy fails.
I think you just summed up life in general:up: ... and my cooking in special...

:rotfl:Ah, yes, "what happened, this recipe tasted great last time?"

[AntEater]

Hmm, I don't like the idea of suddenly emerging events.
For the immidiately involved, it maybe seems so, but if you look at his historical examples like 911 or the first world war, all of those were the result of a long process before and most likely would have happened in a different shape.
I mean if the 911 terrorists somehow failed, it wouldn't have meant that Osama suddenly stopped plotting.
The next operation of that size or the one after that would've caused a similar devastation in the US and would have triggered a similar response.

[Skybird]

Hmm, I don't like the idea of suddenly emerging events.
response.

Well, who does? ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Taleb's Black Swans are not so much only random events, but events that had been considered to be impossible (all swans are white - thus black swans cannot exist).

Of course you do not like the idea, AntEater - no human likes it. For us humans, it is important to make ourselves believe that we are masters of our fate,t hat we can forsee and master the future, and control it's possible scenarios, and that all is just a question of preparation and crisis management. By that we do not only declare ourselves omnipotent and invincible, which is basis for out optimism, but we raise a feeling of security in us which is paramount for us in order to feel at home in life, and dare to stand up in the porning - becaseu that is quite a bigger effort if you consider allcosmos to be hostile, at least not being interest at all in ypour personal tiny little fate. By attrubuting our control to things, olife, time and future, we attach meaning to our role in life, and meaning to life itself therefore. And for most people I ever met it is almost impossible to ease their grip around this self-conviction, and give it up. It triggers most existential fears to do so for most people - especially for us Westerners and our linear, dualistic culture. We cannot bear to meaningless life, and one way to attribute meaning to it is to attribute predictability to it - and our ability to control it. If not individually, so at least in form of general trends formulated by mean values of statistics. We then say the exception from the rule just proves it. Total illogical nonsens that statement is, but we believe it.

But the black swans are there, even if we could not imagine they exist. And history all to often has been turned and chnaged by what had not been forseen, but the small, unpredicted random event, by that bad mishap of bad luck, that tragic chain of single events, that bad coincidence of two variables.

[AntEater]

I don't say these events are predictable.
They're not inexplicable, they happen for a reason.
Also, they either accelerate or slow down a process, but hardly introduce new tendencies.
Problem is, this book is subjectivistic, while I'm not.
I still have a hegellian dialectic view of history.
For the individual, these events are sudden and seemingly random.
However, the causes of most events are known and sometimes even expected.
Intelligence had predicted a major terrorist attack in the US for years, for example and the assasination of Franz Ferdinand was so likely that many tried to dissuade him from visiting Sarajevo.
Worst example is the rise of the Internet:
You have US information technology, in a way jumpstarted by WW2 codebreaking which turned the existing manufacturers of mechanical computers into producers of electronic computers.
Cold war advances accelerated this, leading from analog to digital computers, giving rise to the idea of creating a military communications network of decentralized nature by linking these digital computers.
This was made available to universities as a side product. Later, development in the academic sector led to new protocols like TCP/IP developed by CERN (as a side product) which opened way to commercial applications.
To a total computer layperson, it might seem that the WWW fell from the sky, but with the slightest knowledge it is a process that took since the late 1960s and had its origins in WW2 or even earlier.
A single even, like a programmer spilling coffee over a computer, thereby eliminating his work, might've delayed this for a year or two, or even shortened it because he came up with something better
;)

[Skybird]

I don't say these events are predictable.
They're not inexplicable, they happen for a reason.

Prove it! ;) Taleb would remind you now that he does not believe in the reason of events, and that he sees this attriubution of meaning to events as a myth, since meaning is a concept that is useless in a world of maxium complexity, and thus: chaos. In primncippe it is the same what I say when telling you that people attribute meaning to things: the meaning is their own creation. franikl would tell you the same. Or radical constructivism: we do not find reality with your senses and our mind - we invent (create) it.

Also, they either accelerate or slow down a process, but hardly introduce new tendencies.

Not true, as being shown in many examples of scientific discoveries that were unsystematic and completely unintentional, poltical events, military events, events in history.

Problem is, this book is subjectivistic, while I'm not.

That just is an expression of your subjectivism. Taleb is subjective, too. The difference between you two is he is aware of it - you not! ;)

I still have a hegellian dialectic view of history.
For the individual, these events are sudden and seemingly random.

then I see where you come from. Well, You three then need to disagree where you think you must disagree, I can't help it.

[UnderseaLcpl]

A few questions from the less-gifted, if someone would be so kind:doh:


I'd like a description of the ideas in this book in layman's terms before I buy it. All I'm gleaning from the discussion so far is:

1) The universe is so complex that it is extremely difficult to understand the order of it
2) Random, unexpected things happen, even seemingly impossible things
3) Humans try to categorize and interpret things into a rational system they can use, even though they are basically inventing a system
4) People like predictability

That all sounds like common sense, so I'm missing something, right?
Sorry to be so ignorant about it, but I'd like to learn, starting with the basics. Please:D ?

[Skybird]

Lance,

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1400063515/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/imbeciles.htm

;)

[joegrundman]

skybird posted some links in his first post. you could try those? then you can try googling his name. There are dozens of free articles, many by the man himself, on the internet.

But basically the story is that he made millions as a stock trader by betting that nobody really understood how any of it worked, and that all economic models fail to predict the huge epoch-changing exceptions that can be expected to turn up from time to time.

And this gives his opinions a certain tried and tested cachet.

[UnderseaLcpl]

It's a little clearer, but I went ahead and ordered the book from the link Sky so generously provided. A little education never hurt anyone:D

[Skybird]

skybird posted some links in his first post. you could try those? then you can try googling his name. There are dozens of free articles, many by the man himself, on the internet.

But basically the story is that he made millions as a stock trader by betting that nobody really understood how any of it worked, and that all economic models fail to predict the huge epoch-changing exceptions that can be expected to turn up from time to time.

And this gives his opinions a certain tried and tested cachet.

He is called the enfant terrible of Wall Street. He predicted the current crisis and its roadmap of unfolding years ahead, and he made a fortune by methods that could be described as swimmign against the stream and doing it different that theory demanded. He labels classic economy theory "disgustingly wrong", and sees most managers and top analysists as incompeten, or boring and mediocre at bestt. He takes the higher prices for invitations to hold a speech the lower his opinion is of his audience. He certainly considers himself to be somewhat superior - but his success in the financial world and the failure of the system currently both prove him right. The Times called him "one of the hottest thinkers on the globe". I cannot say I really like the man, but that is not important. Important are his views and his arguments for them, and the way in which he mediates them to the reader, which I found highly entertaining and original, though sometimes a bit stressing - he jumps a lot.

[Skybird]

and I forgot, I got sent a link for an interview with the man, but it is for German readers only:

http://www.faz.net/s/Rub58241E4DF1B149538ABC24D0E82A6266/Doc~EF6D5DDD6D5B1407AA8EB0A6CF37A3919~ATpl~Ecommon ~Scontent.html

In there is a link (German again) to an article about the book and its theory:
http://www.faz.net/s/RubBE163169B4324E24BA92AAEB5BDEF0DA/Doc~EA5F0C6808DD648DD8D0C9D252CD499B8~ATpl~Ecommon ~Scontent.html



Thanks again, mate! ;)

[joea]

Well I know what I'm reading on my next trip. Thanks for the tip Skybird it looks fascinating.:up:

[Skybird]

Well I know what I'm reading on my next trip. Thanks for the tip Skybird it looks fascinating.:up:
Check his other books. I picked the Black Swan because only this and I think a second one have been translated to german. But he wrote several others which are available in English. Ican't comment on those, of course. "Black Swan" seems to be one of more - if not the most - popular, though.