[I’m going to ‘sticky’ this to the top of the blog for a couple of weeks to make sure everyone stopping by sees it. The links are to draft chapters of NNT’s major update to The Black Swan. He’s asked for comments, please consider posting your comments here.]
nntaleb: The return of Fat Tony http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTony1.pdf (comments welcome)
nntaleb: Fat Tony out-argues Socrates the Athenian, an argumentative man www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTony2.pdf (comnts welcome…but not abt typos)
…in anxious anticipation I await for the three principles of Fat Tony.
I’m more of the philosophical type, but just so you know, you’ve inspired me to read financial charts. We can speculate all we want, but the FACT of what happened should confirm or disprove our assumption.
The most powerful tool we have is the ability to change our minds… too bad so many cling to their errors.
As I’m sure Donnie knows, BlackSwanReport.com has no direct association with NNT, I put it together to collect the latest news from and about a favorite author. But when I saw NNT’s invitation to comment on the recent ‘The Return of Fat Tony’ draft chapter, it occurred to me as well, there really is no way to comment other than direct email (or Twitter replies), so actually BlackSwanReport, which allows comments is probably a good place to post your response.
This is a comment on “Fat Tony out-argues Socrates the Athenian, an argumentative man”
p. 68, Taleb writes: “Third, the scientific: Does science lead to technology or does technology lead to science? If the first statement were true, if we really need science for technology beyond the ornament, then universities should be able to produce a larger share of the technological discoveries.
They haven’t, historically, as of the time of writing; the record is clear, clear, clear! Furthermore, technology appears to emerge randomly, making discoveries rely on randomness far more than design, meaning that the ideal activity of stochastic tinkering can largely dispense with the
theoreticians as they can be more of a hindrance than anything”
Taleb seems to diminish the role of science in favor of technology and tinkering. I would argue that science or the scientific method is what makes technology really powerful.
For a long time China had an advanced technology not based on science. They were ahead of Europe for a long time. But when Europe developed a technology based on science, Europe overtook China.
It would be interesting to investigate if Europeans perfected the technology of guns based on Newtonian mechanics. Maybe not. Maybe European gun manufacturers were just tinkering. But I would argue that if you are tinkering in a systematic way you are consciously or not influenced by the scientific method. You don’t need to be in a university to do work that can be deemed “scientific”.
In the first edition, Fat Tony made his money buying bankruptcy properties, then buying and selling gas stations. If Tony is going to play a larger part in the second edition, I’d like to know him a little better through his actions- more examples of the kind of insights he turns into a life of leisure.
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I might need to understand the Euthyphro dialog a little bit better in order to get the full impact of Fat Tony’s subsequent conversation with Socrates.
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Did anyone else go through an intense Ayn Rand phase? In my twenties I got very much caught up in her non-fiction. Especially I’m grateful still for ‘Philosophy, Who Needs It’ which introduced me to the importance of epistemology. Not too much later I found what I considered a fatal flaw in her logic- that ‘man qua man’, was the objective standard by which all moral behavior is measured- and moved on. But I did read her biographies and was fascinated to see how someone whose entire philosophy revolved around the ‘rational’ could end up so lost (relationships to other people) in real life. To my mind, a classic example of the ‘Error of Rationalism”.
JohnH I think you would appreciate the work of Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess who started young with a hyper-rational perspective but later in life was able to expand this perspective by expanding the idea of self.
To quote wikipedia: “According to Næss, every being, whether human, animal or vegetable has an equal right to live and to blossom. Through this capitalized Self, Næss emphasizes, in distinction to realization of man’s narrow selves, the realization of our selves as part of an ecospheric whole.”
He presents the idea we can cancel the narrowly rational perspective if a more valuable and broadly rational perspective is available. Anecdotally it is believed that Arne had a rich and varied life full of family and friends, unlike Ayn Rand who seems to me to have endured a somewhat cold and painful experience inside the prison of her own mind’s creation. I didn’t know either of them, however anecdotally I can observe that to me Ayn’s fans seem more cold and lonelier and Arne’s fans seem to be a bit more lively and free.
Hi Eric,
I will check him out. Off the top of my head I’m reminded of George Lakoff‘s concept of people leaning towards either what he calls the ‘Strict Father’ or the ‘Nurturing Parent’ model of morality. Operating rationally within either of those paradigms causes very different behavior. In my opinion, Ayn Rand’s philosophy wouldn’t prevent one from discovering a broader ‘self’ that connected to all living things. But it was her own bias, and ego, that led her into that dark period at the end of her life. That her fans hold her up as some heroic icon of rational self empowerment just tells me they don’t really know the whole story. She was human after all!
Thanks for stopping by!
Hello, I’m making my way through Taleb’s masterpiece of a manifesto called “antifragility” and am nearing the end of Book IV, clearly a milestone of sorts.
At any rate, I’m scrambling a bit to remember the definition of a sucker. That term is not in the glossary, nor the Index, yet it is a core concept that must be mastered for those who want to claim comprehension of the book.
Perhaps the next edition could include this term in the glossary. I know what a turkey is, but that is not a sucker.
What’s a quick, glossary definition of a sucker? Is that the fellow who believes that his myopic approach to life itself is somehow causative of particular outcomes?
Thanks so much. Matt Dubuque
A ‘sucker’ in this context is someone who, lacking in social intelligence, is easily separated from their money (or more broadly, anything of value). See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute