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The Black Swan

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Jochen Fromm-4

The Black Swan

I am currently trying to read Taleb's "Black Swan".
Paul and Glen mentioned it earlier a few weeks ago,
and Russ said it has some nice points. So I read
the first chapter and thought "well, interesting".
Then I read the second about Yevgenia Krasnova,
a fictional character which embodies his anger
about publishers, and thought "what a crap".

Somehow it goes on like this: it is hard to
say if it is crap (his "Mediocristan" and
"Extremistan" for example) or a masterpiece.
Chapter three is better again. Many ideas
are exhilarating, but the terms are often
very idiosyncratic.

His main topic, the "Black Swan", is less
interesting than the many thought provoking
ideas one can find between the lines, when Taleb
talks about his experiences or uprising. After
all, points where little things can make a big
difference are not new, John H. Holland has
called them "Lever points", Murray Gell-Mann
"frozen accidents", and Gladwell "tipping points".

Do you agree? What do you think are his most
interesting points? I like for instance the
paragraphs about "scalable professions":
for Taleb it is "a profession in which you are
not paid by the hour and thus subject to the
limitations of the amount of labor" (p. 27).
It is in interesting idea to apply "scalability"
to professions and payoffs.

-J.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Phil Henshaw-2

Re: The Black Swan

I'd agree Taleb does not communicate his main insights consistently, and
uses fuzzy generalities that you need to "grok" to make sense of. I don't
think one needs to deal with all that to get the main point, though.

The reasons why *statistical analysis fails for subjects of increasing
non-homogenous complexity* seems invaluable. It's a principle that might
be derived simply from any number of directions, and is an important point.
Our world is making the critical error exposed in any number of ways it
appears.

It's also interestingly central to the complexity theory of W M Elsasser
that he developed in the 50's and 60's. He's an extraordinarily clear
thinking theoretical physicist/biologist who points to that as a gap in
statistical mechanics that needs to be considered for any attempt to model
non-homogenous systems like life.

I even find that "strategy of the gaps" remotely similar to how Rosen points
to why divergent sequences can't be represented in closed systems of
equations, but are clearly part of life, and so are necessary for any
attempt to model such non-homogenously developing and changing systems as
life.

Phil Henshaw

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 4:59 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] The Black Swan
>
> I am currently trying to read Taleb's "Black Swan".
> Paul and Glen mentioned it earlier a few weeks ago,
> and Russ said it has some nice points. So I read
> the first chapter and thought "well, interesting".
> Then I read the second about Yevgenia Krasnova,
> a fictional character which embodies his anger
> about publishers, and thought "what a crap".
>
> Somehow it goes on like this: it is hard to
> say if it is crap (his "Mediocristan" and
> "Extremistan" for example) or a masterpiece.
> Chapter three is better again. Many ideas
> are exhilarating, but the terms are often
> very idiosyncratic.
>
> His main topic, the "Black Swan", is less
> interesting than the many thought provoking
> ideas one can find between the lines, when Taleb
> talks about his experiences or uprising. After
> all, points where little things can make a big
> difference are not new, John H. Holland has
> called them "Lever points", Murray Gell-Mann
> "frozen accidents", and Gladwell "tipping points".
>
> Do you agree? What do you think are his most
> interesting points? I like for instance the
> paragraphs about "scalable professions":
> for Taleb it is "a profession in which you are
> not paid by the hour and thus subject to the
> limitations of the amount of labor" (p. 27).
> It is in interesting idea to apply "scalability"
> to professions and payoffs.
>
> -J.
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Russ Abbott

Re: The Black Swan

Taleb's writing style is very personal. He likes telling stories. Chapter 9 "The Ludic Fallacy" contains what I would consider the essence of his message. It's fun reading--and it's online.

-- Russ

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 6:42 AM, Phil Henshaw <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'd agree Taleb does not communicate his main insights consistently, and
uses fuzzy generalities that you need to "grok" to make sense of. I don't
think one needs to deal with all that to get the main point, though.

The reasons why *statistical analysis fails for subjects of increasing
non-homogenous complexity* seems invaluable. It's a principle that might
be derived simply from any number of directions, and is an important point.
Our world is making the critical error exposed in any number of ways it
appears.

It's also interestingly central to the complexity theory of W M Elsasser
that he developed in the 50's and 60's. He's an extraordinarily clear
thinking theoretical physicist/biologist who points to that as a gap in
statistical mechanics that needs to be considered for any attempt to model
non-homogenous systems like life.

I even find that "strategy of the gaps" remotely similar to how Rosen points
to why divergent sequences can't be represented in closed systems of
equations, but are clearly part of life, and so are necessary for any
attempt to model such non-homogenously developing and changing systems as
life.

Phil Henshaw

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 4:59 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] The Black Swan
>
> I am currently trying to read Taleb's "Black Swan".
> Paul and Glen mentioned it earlier a few weeks ago,
> and Russ said it has some nice points. So I read
> the first chapter and thought "well, interesting".
> Then I read the second about Yevgenia Krasnova,
> a fictional character which embodies his anger
> about publishers, and thought "what a crap".
>
> Somehow it goes on like this: it is hard to
> say if it is crap (his "Mediocristan" and
> "Extremistan" for example) or a masterpiece.
> Chapter three is better again. Many ideas
> are exhilarating, but the terms are often
> very idiosyncratic.
>
> His main topic, the "Black Swan", is less
> interesting than the many thought provoking
> ideas one can find between the lines, when Taleb
> talks about his experiences or uprising. After
> all, points where little things can make a big
> difference are not new, John H. Holland has
> called them "Lever points", Murray Gell-Mann
> "frozen accidents", and Gladwell "tipping points".
>
> Do you agree? What do you think are his most
> interesting points? I like for instance the
> paragraphs about "scalable professions":
> for Taleb it is "a profession in which you are
> not paid by the hour and thus subject to the
> limitations of the amount of labor" (p. 27).
> It is in interesting idea to apply "scalability"
> to professions and payoffs.
>
> -J.
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

QEF@aol.com

Re: The Black Swan

In reply to this post by Phil Henshaw-2

Greetings, all --

It was nice to be in Santa Fe again, albeit briefly. Eric Falkenstein is not a lover of Taleb, and so I'll pass this along with that proviso and note that it's helpful to think through some of both Taleb's statements and Falkenstein's reactions:

http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/fooled-by-randomness.html

Here is an earlier posting by Falkenstein that may give you some of the flavor of his feelings for Taleb:

Martin Gardner wrote a popular column for Scientific American, and in the process received a lot of mail from ‘cranks’ telling him about perpetual motion machines and the like. So he wrote a book called Fads and Fallacies. In the book he describes "cranks" who he describes as having five invariable characteristics:

A profound intellectual superiority complex.
Regards other researchers as idiotic, and always operates outside the peer review system.
Believes there is a campaign against their ideas, a campaign compared with the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur.
Attacks only the biggest theories and scientific figures.
Coins neologisms.

On Taleb’s personal website he describes himself thusly: He is also an essayist, belletrist, literary-philosophical-mathematical flâneur. The third-person is perfect pitch for describing himself, and the rest , well, literary-philosophical-mathematical types—especially flâneurs—tend to be full of themselves, supporting Gardner’s characteristic #1. He prides himself on not submitting articles to refereed journals, and considers most people who are indifferent to him as fools, disdains editors, even spellcheckers (#2). He pridefully notes that someone told him “in another time he would have been hanged [me: for what, inanity?].” Wilmott Magazine, a quant publication published by his colleague Paul Wilmott, wrote a fawning article about him where they noted that he is “Wall Street’s principal dissident. Heretic! Calvin to finance’s Catholic Church” (#3). His website states his modest desire to understand chance from the viewpoint of “philosophy/epistemology, philosophy/ethics, mathematics, social science/finance, and cognitive science”, supporting #4. Lastly, for #5, has gone so far as to print a glossary for his neologisms (eg, “epistemic arrogance” for “overconfidence”). In Martin Gardner’s taxonomy, Taleb is a classic crank.

(end of excerpt - via Mahalanobis 20 April 2007)

- Claiborne -

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Henshaw <[hidden email]>
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 7:42 am
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

I'd agree Taleb does not communicate his main insights consistently, and

uses fuzzy generalities that you need to "grok" to make sense of.  I don't

think one needs to deal with all that to get the main point, though.



The reasons why *statistical analysis fails for subjects of increasing

non-homogenous complexity* seems invaluable.   It's a principle that might

be derived simply from any number of directions, and is an important point.

Our world is making the critical error exposed in any number of ways it

appears.   



It's also interestingly central to the complexity theory of W M Elsasser

that he developed in the 50's and 60's.  He's an extraordinarily clear

thinking theoretical physicist/biologist who points to that as a gap in

statistical mechanics that needs to be considered for any attempt to model

non-homogenous systems like life.   



I even find that "strategy of the gaps" remotely similar to how Rosen points

to why divergent sequences can't be represented in closed systems of

equations, but are clearly part of life, and so are necessary for any

attempt to model such n
on-homogenously developing and changing systems as

life.



Phil Henshaw  



> -----Original Message-----

> From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On

> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm

> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 4:59 AM

> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

> Subject: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

> 

> I am currently trying to read Taleb's "Black Swan".

> Paul and Glen mentioned it earlier a few weeks ago,

> and Russ said it has some nice points. So I read

> the first chapter and thought "well, interesting".

> Then I read the second about Yevgenia Krasnova,

> a fictional character which embodies his anger

> about publishers, and thought "what a crap".

> 

> Somehow it goes on like this: it is hard to

> say if it is crap (his "Mediocristan" and

> "Extremistan" for example) or a masterpiece.

> Chapter three is better again. Many ideas

> are exhilarating, but the terms are often

> very idiosyncratic.

> 

> His main topic, the "Black Swan", is less

> interesting than the many thought provoking

> ideas one can find between the lines, when Taleb

> talks about his experiences or uprising. After

> all, points where little things can make a big

> difference are not new, John H. Holland has

> called them "Lever points", Murray20Gell-Mann

> "frozen accidents", and Gladwell "tipping points".

> 

> Do you agree? What do you think are his most

> interesting points? I like for instance the

> paragraphs about "scalable professions":

> for Taleb it is "a profession in which you are

> not paid by the hour and thus subject to the

> limitations of the amount of labor" (p. 27).

> It is in interesting idea to apply "scalability"

> to professions and payoffs.

> 

> -J.

> 

> 

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org







============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Instant access to the latest & most popular FREE games while you browse with the Games Toolbar - Download Now!

Phil Henshaw-2

Re: The Black Swan

It’s interesting how rare it is that one gets to directly address the ‘academic prejudices’ that people hold, like the little sparks one can see flying from Gardner’s list of characteristics of a “crank” and Falkenstein’s use of it. The list and it’s use neatly ignore that both rather neatly fit the model their own derogatory stereotype!... We should beware of using “neo-con like” judgment in science. I prefer the ‘mantra’ that “no matter what the complaint, there’s nearly always something to it,.. if I only knew what!”

“Expert error” and “expert confusion” is unquestionably the direct cause of our world collapsing right now, for example. It’s expert designed systems that are doing it. I’ve been pointing very directly to the critical errors being made. So has Taleb, from another approach. It’s important not only look for solutions, but also to see what is unsolvable. It explains why previously trustworthy systems can go hopelessly out of control. A usual part of expert error, of course, is reading “dismissal before content” in the usual peer review process. Is that truly as unsolvable as it seems?

Phil Henshaw

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 3:18 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

A profound intellectual superiority complex.
Regards other researchers as idiotic, and always operates outside the peer review system.
Believes there is a campaign against their ideas, a campaign compared with the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur.
Attacks only the biggest theories and scientific figures.
Coins neologisms.

I'd agree Taleb does not communicate his main insights consistently, and

uses fuzzy generalities that you need to "grok" to make sense of.  I don't

think one needs to deal with all that to get the main point, though.

The reasons why *statistical analysis fails for subjects of increasing

non-homogenous complexity* seems invaluable.   It's a principle that might

be derived simply from any number of directions, and is an important point.

Our world is making the critical error exposed in any number of ways it

appears.

It's also interestingly central to the complexity theory of W M Elsasser

that he developed in the 50's and 60's.  He's an extraordinarily clear

thinking theoretical physicist/biologist who points to that as a gap in

statistical mechanics that needs to be considered for any attempt to model

non-homogenous systems like life.

I even find that "strategy of the gaps" remotely similar to how Rosen points

to why divergent sequences can't be represented in closed systems of

equations, but are clearly part of life, and so are necessary for any

attempt to model such n

on-homogenously developing and changing systems as

life.

Phil Henshaw

> -----Original Message-----

> From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On

> Behalf Of Jochen Fromm

> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 4:59 AM

> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

> Subject: [FRIAM] The Black Swan

> I am currently trying to read Taleb's "Black Swan".

> Paul and Glen mentioned it earlier a few weeks ago,

> and Russ said it has some nice points. So I read

> the first chapter and thought "well, interesting".

> Then I read the second about Yevgenia Krasnova,

> a fictional character which embodies his anger

> about publishers, and thought "what a crap".

> Somehow it goes on like this: it is hard to

> say if it is crap (his "Mediocristan" and

> "Extremistan" for example) or a masterpiece.

> Chapter three is better again. Many ideas

> are exhilarating, but the terms are often

> very idiosyncratic.

> His main topic, the "Black Swan", is less

> interesting than the many thought provoking

> ideas one can find between the lines, when Taleb

> talks about his experiences or uprising. After

> all, points where little things can make a big

> difference are not new, John H. Holland has

> called them "Lever points", Murray20Gell-Mann

> "frozen accidents", and Gladwell "tipping points".

> Do you agree? What do you think are his most

> interesting points? I like for instance the

> paragraphs about "scalable professions":

> for Taleb it is "a profession in which you are

> not paid by the hour and thus subject to the

> limitations of the amount of labor" (p. 27).

> It is in interesting idea to apply "scalability"

> to professions and payoffs.

> -J.

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Instant access to the latest & most popular FREE games while you browse with the Games Toolbar - Download Now!

Phil Henshaw-2

Today's Sci Times re: a common expert error

In reply to this post by QEF@aol.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18tier.html?_r=1&8dpc about how doctors who showed no bias in their treatment of patients were described as making prejudiced life and death decisions by a widely accepted (quick) statistical means of measuring bias on test, that … gave them no chance to think it through or actually make a choice…

Phil Henshaw

Carl Tollander

Physician survey

While you're on the subject of doctors and surveys,
http://www.physiciansfoundations.org/news/news_show.htm?doc_id=728872

Checking out the Complete Survey Report & Analysis link won't take up
too much time, and as more companies enter the "open enrollment" season
for health plans it's something to meditate on.

C.

Phil Henshaw wrote:

>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18tier.html?_r=1&8dpc
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18tier.html?_r=1&8dpc>
> about how doctors who showed no bias in their treatment of patients
> were described as making prejudiced life and death decisions by a
> widely accepted (quick) statistical means of measuring bias on test,
> that … gave them no chance to think it through or actually make a choice…
>
>
>
> Phil Henshaw
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org