Be Average Or Else…

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economy, life, nassim nicholas taleb, organisation, rules, science, society, The Black Swan

Finally I have finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, “Black Swan”. I enjoyed it, I fully agree with ideas presented there, although those are not easy to understand. Some of those ideas are close to my own view at so-called “sciences”, especially managerial or social. I think (and the book seems to confirm my point) that making up rules which organisations built out of humans (such as companies, communities, etc) is a nonsense, people who stubbornly try to use those rules should not be surprised that things don’t work out the way “science” said that they should. Reason is simple: each human being introduces unknown factor and predictions are pointless. We often fall victims to self-confirmation, seeing that in some rare cases rules do work, we are forced to believe that they should work in any case. Not so. In this there is a hidden reason why only experienced managers, who can draw on lessons learned while dealing with people, should be getting the MBA degrees. Theory is just wishful thinking without practical experience and case by case approach. This is one side of the coin.

The other side is that those rules are accepted and approved be people who simply don’t like, or cannot live, in chaos. Therefore we are made to fit them. Any behaviour, even truly normal, but nevertheless not “average”, is being frown upon. Rules don’t deal with extremities at all. For those rules, extreme differences don’t exist. If you behave outside of them, you are being frowned upon. On top of this, majority (all averages) dictate what the markets approve. Hence niche markets are getting smaller and smaller. Pop music forces rock and roll out, cars look pretty much the same and cost the same in their respective segments (offering the same options), companies unite and swallow each other up on the way to duopolies or monopolies in various industries. I don’t know if you agree with me, but I have a feeling that not only rules are made which do not fit reality, but we are made to fit those rules. Double whammy.

The “Black Swan” of course deals with a lot of other, important issues, the one described above is just something which struck me when I was reading that book. We follow people who call themselves “experts” having no right to do so, we base our (financial) future on people who have no idea what they are doing. And at the end, we pay. And accept that too.

I don’t want to be average. I want to be me, unique sample of human species. I don’t want to be forced to like pop music just because someone said that everybody likes it. I don’t want to be forced to save failing banks just because some idiot says it’s for my good. You get the picture. I enjoy being unique me…

Scholarly Sounding Verbiage

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harvard business school, nassim nicholas taleb, Taleb, The Black Swan

One of my friends has borrowed me a great book recently, which I am reading now (with great pleasure, I have to add). It is the “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and the title of current post comes from it. I have posted yesterday one of my favourite passages from that book here.

Mr. Taleb is so very right in many things he wrote in his book. We love the “…scholarly sounding verbiage (b******t),  the pompous Gaussian economist, the mathematicised crap, the pomp, the Academie Francaise, Harvard Business School…”, we love all sorts of recipes, ready-made advice applicable seemingly to all and everything. We are so much in favour of ten points, three ways, seven habits that we forget to realize that whatever worked for one person in one particular situation has very small chances in working in other situation for other person – or organisation. The problem here is that if enough people will try to use those seven habits, by pure chance some are bound to succeed. We will then think that the recipe works, not paying attention to the “dark side of the moon”, namely to all people or organisations which failed using those same seven habits or, as Mr. Taleb calls it, “scholarly sounding verbiage” bullshit.

One of our traits is that we force ourselves to believe that those theories work, finding proof in their favor, not looking at the issue like we should and taking all into account. Why? Well, here is what Mr. Taleb tells us: “…We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial – and we do not know it. This is not a psychological problem; it comes from the main property of information. The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly in both computational and mental effort.” Thinking is an effort.

Business schools would do better to teach us how to think, not how to forcefully use some scholarly sounding bullshit often enough for it to finally work. Damn and ignore the poor souls which failed, praise those who succeeded, loud enough for all others to see that the theory works… Next time you will be told something like that, ask yourself what is the dark side of the moon in that case. Make an effort. Think. Maybe you will come up with a different solution to your particular problem, fitting your particular predicament. If you will be lucky enough, maybe you will get to make another five steps to be a guru in whatever you managed to solve.