Creative Think

The Black Swan

Market crashes! Fads! 9/11! Fashion changes!
The quick demise of the Soviet Empire!
Epidemics! Viagra, a Success! Harry Potter, a Phenomenon!

Why are things so surprising?

Every so often, a book comes along that:

1. Forces you to question your basic assumptions about how human knowledge is created;
2. Reaffirms your skepticism about experts and their opinions and prognostications; and/or,
3. Is highly entertaining in its varied use of stories, examples, and anecdotes.

Nassim Taleb's new book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, happily and systematically delivers on all three counts.

I had read Taleb's Fooled By Randomness, and enjoyed it. But "The Black Swan" is a much deeper and well thought-out exploration of the "unexpected" in our lives.

While Taleb's style is fun (and sometimes rude), personal, and engaging, the book itself (because of its subject matter) is not easy to plow through. My strategy was to read 10-15 pages a night for three weeks. My reward: a fresh perspective of some basic epistemological concepts.

The two main points are the book are: 1) the future is unpredictable; and, 2) we humans try to concoct stories to convince ourselves that the world is more predictable than it actually is.

Taleb defines a "black swan" as having these three characteristics: 1) it's an outlier: something outside the realm of regular expectations; 2) it carries an extreme impact; and, 3) it can be explained after its occurrence but can't be predicted beforehand. There you have it: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability.

Much of the book consists of an exploration of 1) our blindness to randomness — particularly the big deviations— and 2) what Taleb calls "Black Swan Logic." Taleb is especially hard on Plato (and his intellectual descendants), categorical thinking, and the "Bell Curve" of expectations.

The more you summarize, the more order you put in, the less randomness. Hence the same condition that makes us simplify pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is . . . .

. . . Black Swan Logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many Black Swans can be caused and exacerbated by their being unexpected.

Taleb has a different background from most philosophers: he grew up in Lebanon and came of age during their civil war; he studied at Wharton and was a successful Wall Street trader who made a killing during the market crash of 1987; and he seems at home throughout the world with friends and business associates from many different industries. All of this feeds the many diverse examples he shares throughout the book.

There area lot of juicy morsels in this book. After discussing several civil wars and the fall of the Soviet Empire, he muses:

The studious examination of the past in the greatest of detail does not teach you much about the mind of History; it only gives you the illusion of understanding it. History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture.

Here's his take on elite thinkers vs. cabdrivers (in their ability to predict events):

I noticed that very intelligent and informed people were at no advantage over cabdrivers in their predictions, but there was a crucial difference. Cabdrivers did not believe that they understood as much as learned people — really, they were not the experts and they knew it. Nobody knew anything, but elite thinkers thought they knew more than the rest because they were elite thinkers, and if you're a member of the elite, you automatically know more than the non-elite.

Another gem (based on his observations about Aristotle Onasis, and a psychology study investigating  information and problem-solving):

The more information you give someone, the more hypotheses they will formulate along the way, and the worse they will be [in their ability to solve the problem]. They see more random noise and mistake it for information.

Taleb believes that as the world becomes increasingly more complex, the sources of Black Swans have multiplied beyond measure. Thus, we need to clean up our thinking about just what is possible in the real world. Taleb's book, The Black Swan, is an excellent first step. I recommend it.

Here is a video of Taleb on the Colbert Report.

Does Your Bookshelf = Your World View?

Diego Rodriguez has a provocative quote from Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, (as quoted in The Omnivore's Dilemma)

"The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview.  You can learn more about that by seeing what's on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms."

This quote led me to think about the idea of "what do the books on your bookshelf say about your world view?"

In my own case, I think that my book shelf was a better indicator of my world view twenty years ago than it is today. And I believe that it will be an even less of an indicator in the future. That's because many of the ideas and images that I pick up today aren't from the pages of a book, but from the screens of my various digital appliances. It's difficult to display those in an easy-to-grasp way for the casual browser.

Also, when I was younger, it gave me great comfort to see all of my books spread out on book shelves. I'd look at them and think, "So that's what I know!" (Don't laugh, I'm sure many of you have been there as well.) It was also fun to look at other people's books and their record collections (remember LPs and their great art?).

As the years have gone on, my philosophy has changed and I've tried to give a lot of these away to friends and libraries, so that I'm left with just a core set of books that I go back to from time to time for inspiration.

Question: Does your bookshelf equal your world view? And, if not, where would someone go to see your world view on display?

Re-Reading Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"

I've already commented (here) about the recent passing of novelist Kurt Vonnegut at age 84. (The image on the left appeared on Vonnegut's website shortly after his death, meaning, I guess, "that bird has flown.")

We had a rainy morning in northern California and I didn't feel like going out. So I picked up my copy of "Cat's Cradle" and spent the next three hours re-reading a book that I had first digested nearly four decades ago. I've read all of Vonnegut's novels, but this was always my favorite.

It was interesting to be taken back to the world of the early 1960s in which the "Cat's Cradle" is set. It made me feel young again.

Vonnegut is funny. And perceptive, of course. And quite dark and cynical too. But the era in which this book is set was dark as well: atmospheric atomic weapons testing by the US and the Soviet Union, and a near miss of World War III during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. (Kind of makes today's "Global Warming" fears look like a walk in the park in comparison.) Those were some scary times. But looking back at them, I realized that if we can survive that, we can survive almost anything. (Of course, my parents' generation probably felt the same away about the Depression and World War II.)

Anyway, it's a interesting world that Vonnegut puts together. Some of the elements include: the inventor of the A-Bomb. Ice-9, a material that makes water hard. A holy fool, Bokonon, who starts a paradoxical religion. A Midget. Large company R&D. A Caribbean island. The "Grand Ah-Whoom, or the end of the world. A dysfunctional family. And so on. Read it for yourself.

Hollywood did a pretty decent job of making a film out of Slaughterhouse-Five (directed by George Roy Hill, 1972), but failed miserably bringing Breakfast of Champions (1999) to the big screen. I'm glad they never tried with "Cat's Cradle." It works best in the imagination of the reader.

"All of the true things I am about
to tell you are shameless lies." — Bokonon (Cat's Cradle)

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Note: When I went to Amazon to create the link for "Cat's Cradle," I noticed that it was #4 on their bestseller list, and that three other Vonnegut books were in their Top 100. I noticed that the same thing happened several years ago right after novelist Saul Bellow died — his books also zoomed to the top and went on back order. I guess there's a pattern there!

Twittering and Reading Update

David Armano and I are engaged in an exchange program: He's reading the novel The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason about Burma in the 1880s and I'm Twittering.

I'm in Day #5 and these are my observations about my experience with the Twitter phenomenon. (As a gesture of solidarity for David, I've been re-reading the Piano Tuner. Shown are some of my photos from my trip to Burma last year.)

Getting registered at Twitter is fairly simple. It's always good mental stimulation having to figure this stuff out. The Twitter interface seems fairly straight-forward.

My initial circle of "friends" consists of marketing people I've met blogging: Drew, Gavin, Ann Michael, Paul, David. Through Twitter, I also finally got to meet Mike Sansone. I'd seen his blog, but never commented. So we exchanged greetings.

I began to learn the ins and outs of "adding friends." I started receiving invitations from people all over: a veteran blogger in Austin, a teenager in Ann Arbor, a liquor store owner in Oklahoma, a designer in Munich, a lady (CleverClogs) in the Netherlands. I said "yes" to all of them. Why not?

I think that Twitter is having some major infrastructure issues. Response time during the day (I'm in California) was slow. I guess many people are responding to the Twitter buzz and wanting to try it out for themselves.

I found the most rewarding time (for me) to Twitter was 4-5 PM Pacific Time. Response time was good, and there were also a number of "friends" on at the same time. So, the experience felt a little like shooting the bull with about 10 other people. Some things were funny. Some were interesting. Some were inane.

This felt intimate — just a circle of "friends" tossing stuff out. But here's a big caution: you can go to someone's blog site that has "Twitteriffic" installed, and you can see that the whole conversation is being broadcast to the world. So, I learned it's important to watch what you say.

A lot of this experience made me feel like a teenager. I remember six or seven years ago when my then-in-high-school-son would spend a lot of time doing AOL IM with his friends. This is what he must have felt like.

Over the weekend, I tried to give people a sense of what I was doing: "Watching the Buckeyes put it to Memphis." "Took Corgis up to the hills to run around." "Planted De Arbol Chile Peppers." "Got up at 5AM  for Sunday morning swim practice." "Wondering how fast Michael Phelps will go this week." Etc. And I got pretty much the same from the "friends." "What's your favorite movie?" "What kind of bike is that?" "What do you think of Todd's Marketing list?" "Now that my wife is out of town, what should I do for fun?" "I've never been robbed in my liquor store, but the previous owner was." "I'm talking gratitude with my daughter."

At one point, I had the idea of using Twitter as an oracle. My question was: "What should I do next?" and the answer will be whatever the next entry in my Twitter box says. I tried this several times, but when the answers were "Drinking shots of tequilla, yum" and "Smoking a big cigar" I figured that the Twitter oracle was taking a break.

At this point, Twitter is still amusing. But I can see how it can suck a lot of time out of one's day. Also, as I mentioned, the Twitter folks have some serious infrastructure issues on their hands. Sudden popularity can be a real problem. Stay tuned!

Reading Books or Twittering: Which Stimulates Your Creativity (More)?

This is how our "exchange program" got its start.

In a recent conversation with designer David Armano, I asked him how many books he'd read in the past year. "Only a few. I've got too many demands on my time." Among these demands is mastering the various Web 2.0 tools that stimulate conversation such as Twitter.

I told David that he's wasting his time with Twitter. I said, "I've got enough going on with my own innocuous thoughts let alone a lot of other people's inanity."

I continued, "I'm trying to improve my attention span. If you want to create anything worthwhile, you need the ability to focus on what you're doing for a period of time."

David countered saying something to the effect that Twitter is right on the edge of . . . well, something, and he wants to be there to see it. He also mentioned that I was being too narrowed-minded.

I said to him, "Reading — especially fiction — gives you a much better sense of 'story' and 'narrative.' These are important aspects of the design process. You are short-changing yourself by not reading more books."

So we decided to have a "Digital-Analog Exchange Program."

Each of us assigned the other a task for the following week. Then we'll compare notes to see what each of us has learned.

David assigned me to join Twitter (which I have). Go here if you'd like to be my Twitter Friend. As I write this, Paul, David, Gavin, Liz, Ann M., and Drew are my Twitter Friends.

I assigned David to read a novel. I thought about Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (which I adored), but at 1,000 pages I thought it might be a little much. So, I picked The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, which I read before I went to Burma last year. This is from Publisher's Weekly:

Edgar Drake lives a quiet life in late 19th-century London as a tuner of rare pianos. When he's summoned to Burma to repair the instrument of an eccentric major, Anthony Carroll, Edgar bids his wife good-bye and begins the months-long journey east. The first half of the book details his trip. Edgar then meets the unconventional Carroll, who has built a paradise of sorts in the Burmese jungle. Edgar ably tunes the piano, but this turns out to be the least of his duties, as Carroll seeks his services on a mission to make peace between the British and the local Shan people. During his stay at Carroll's camp, Edgar falls for a local beauty, learns to appreciate the magnificence of Burma's landscape and customs and realizes the absurdity of the war between the British and the Burmese.

I think David is getting the better end of the deal: he's going to enter the world of faraway, long-ago Burma. And I'm going to Twitter! I will keep an open mind.

Question: Who is getting the better end of this exchange? What kind of exchange programs would you recommend?

I Like the Teaching Company

   

One of my favorite "discoveries" of this past year was the "Teaching Company." Over the years, I had seen their ads, but it had never dawned on me that I would become a consumer of their recorded products.

That changed when two things happened:

1) My son Alex gave me an iPod for Christmas in 2005, and I discovered I loved listening to podcasts; and

2) I was taking a class on the human brain in February, and one of the students said, "Hey everybody, Sapolsky's series is on sale." He was referring to the eminent Stanford neuro-biologist Robert Sapolsky and the 24 part Teaching Company program on the brain ("The Neurological Origins of Individuality").

I went to their site and found that I could download it in MP4 format for $35.95. I was immediately hooked. Sapolsky's great, the series was well-produced, and I learned a lot. My wife, daughter, and son also downloaded it at no extra cost — so in effect it cost us each $9 for 12 hours of learning.

But that was just the beginning. I listened to a 36 part "History of Science in the 20th Century" flying to and from Hong Kong. Next came a 36 part series on the basics of Economics.

Here's a really neat thing: since this is the Internet, you can download these programs anywhere (well, duh!). When I was in Japan, I finished up one series and wanted another for the flight home.  I simply got another program on Classical Mythology (only 5 minutes to download with a fast connection).

  This past summer, when I was in working in my shop making prototypes for the follow-on product to the Ball of Whacks, I listened to several more programs: one on Nietzsche, another on Cultural Patterns in Anthropology, and still another one on Great Books. My hands and eyes were busy, but these programs gave me additional mental stimulation.

I just finished a 32 part program on Bach by Robert Greenberg who is an extremely talented educator (and composer). I've had a life-long love affair with Bach, and Professor Greenberg deepened my affection for his music. I highly recommend him.

My wife and I are going to Egypt in early February, and so we're currently listening to a program on ancient Egyptian History and Culture.

If you've listened to programs from the Teaching Company, I'd like to know which ones you would recommend. Thanks!

Also, what other sources of educational material can you recommend?