{"id":2675,"date":"2008-04-10T23:35:58","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T23:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2008-04-10T23:36:54","modified_gmt":"2008-04-10T23:36:54","slug":"taking-aim-at-the-black-swan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2675","title":{"rendered":"Taking Aim at the Black Swan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/oz.deichman.net\/\">Shane Deichman<\/a><\/strong> reviews <strong>Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#8217;s<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1400063515?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=zenpundit-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1400063515\"><strong>The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable<\/strong><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" width=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=zenpundit-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1400063515\" height=\"1\" style=\"margin: 0px; border: medium none\" \/>\u00a0and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/oz.deichman.net\/2008\/04\/review-talebs-black-swan.html\">finds it wanting<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Perhaps it&#8217;s my na\u00efvet\u00e9 (or perhaps that I&#8217;m a product of the California public school system), but I honestly don&#8217;t see our civilization marching toward &#8220;Extremistan&#8221;. Quite the opposite: While our awareness of remote events has increased, and our networks have grown exponentially, I believe that the diffuse topology of our networks actually dampens the impact of an extreme event.<\/strong><strong> Consider the &#8220;Butterfly Effect&#8221;. Do you really think a butterfly flapping its wings in Jakarta is going to eventually cause a hurricane in New York City? Or do you think the minor perturbation is absorbed locally without cascading into some kind of <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Resonance\"><strong>resonance<\/strong><\/a><strong>? Yes, there are examples that illustrate <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_destruction.ogg\"><strong>the dire consequences of unplanned resonance<\/strong><\/a><strong>. Taleb (who waffles at the end of his book as half hyperskeptic, half intransigently certain) abandons the Gaussian bell curve, yet &#8212; with only a single mention of <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Albert-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Barab%C3%A1si\"><strong>Albert-L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Barab\u00e1si<\/strong><\/a><strong> &#8212; firmly embraces <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Power_law\"><strong>Power Law<\/strong><\/a><strong> scale invariance as normative.<\/strong><strong>Despite Taleb&#8217;s too-casual treatment of scale, I think he would agree with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/wiki\/George_E._P._Box\"><strong>George E.P. Box&#8217;s <\/strong><\/a><strong>statement (c. 1987) that &#8220;&#8230;[A]ll models are wrong, but some are useful.&#8221; Abandoning our dogmatic devotion to certainty is essential in any creative, innovative enterprise &#8212; and can reveal hidden opportunities, and hidden abilities.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing<a href=\"http:\/\/oz.deichman.net\/2008\/04\/review-talebs-black-swan.html\"> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike most reviewers, Shane could go head-to-head with Taleb on things mathematical ( though you hardly need a math background to understand <strong><em>The Black Swan<\/em><\/strong>) and Shane is right that networks that are intrinsically and generally resilient are better suited to enduring unexpected, system perturbing, black swans.<\/p>\n<p>Hope to have my review up Sunday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shane Deichman reviews Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#8217;s\u00a0The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable\u00a0and finds it wanting: Perhaps it&#8217;s my na\u00efvet\u00e9 (or perhaps that I&#8217;m a product of the California public school system), but I honestly don&#8217;t see our civilization marching toward &#8220;Extremistan&#8221;. Quite the opposite: While our awareness of remote events has increased, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[323,133,78,336,376,155,315,411],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-swans","category-book","category-ideas","category-intellectuals","category-network-theory","category-resilience","category-shane-deichman","category-wizards-of-oz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}