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]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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

I think you just summed up life in general

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Digital_Trucker

I think you just summed up life in general

... and my cooking in special...

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by Skybird

... 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]

Originally Posted by AntEater

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.