{"id":2487,"date":"2010-11-27T14:36:50","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T22:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/edfc40bed1d59760"},"modified":"2010-11-27T14:36:50","modified_gmt":"2010-11-27T22:36:50","slug":"nassim-taleb-suzanne-ma-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/nassim-taleb-suzanne-ma-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Nassim Taleb | Suzanne Ma Online"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Shared by  JohnH<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s great to see NNT&#8217;s ideas put to use. Raise the standards!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb\">Nassim Taleb<\/a>, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable\/dp\/1400063515\">The Black Swan<\/a>, has written about this. He calls it the \u201cnarrative fallacy\u201d which is a fancy  way of saying the news media takes the facts at hand and weaves together a story line that either a) they think readers\/viewers want to hear or b) reinforces the reporter\/editor\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n<p>International or not, all breaking news reporters \u2013 this one included \u2013 are guilty of this. Even magazine journalists can make such mistakes \u2013 Maclean\u2019s magazine\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.macleans.ca\/2010\/11\/10\/too-asian\/\">Too Asian<\/a>\u201d story is a recent, ripe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.suzannema.com\/2010\/11\/17\/too-asian\/\">example<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Taleb writes in his book:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The way to avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy is to favor experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories. Certainly the newspaper cannot perform an experiment, but it can choose one report over another \u2013 there is plenty of empirical research to present and interpret from \u2026 Being empirical does not mean running a laboratory in one\u2019s basement: it is just a mind-set that favors a certain class of knowledge over others. I do not forbid myself from using the world <em>cause<\/em>, but the causes I discuss are either bold speculations (presented as such) or the results of experiments, not stories.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So with my most recent piece on China\u2019s scientific publishing industry \u2013 and in a forthcoming analysis on China\u2019s mental health problems, I am steering clear of narrative fallacies and striving to produce more analytical stories, backed up not by anecdotes but by empirical research. But empirical research takes time, you see. It\u2019s not something a political scientist, doctor or economist can always drum up in time for a reporter\u2019s deadline.<\/p>\n<p>These days, this reporter is enjoying a more flexible deadline. The result, I hope, is for a better, a smarter and a more accurate story for you, dear readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shared by  JohnH <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s great to see NNT&#8217;s ideas put to use. Raise the standards!<br \/>\nNassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, has written about this. He calls it the \u201cnarrative fallacy\u201d which is a fancy  way of saying the news media takes the facts at &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}