Tag: better future

Randomness & Creating Outcomes

I read Nasim Taleb’s books, “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Our Life and in the Markets” and “Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable“, in 2014 and 2015. I created this post a few years ago but just noticed it was not published. His books are great, and they have provided great insight. I encourage all to read his books. I updated these posts – Enjoy. Please share your thoughts when you read his work.

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blackswan

To me, his books explained that although hard work cannot cause success, it is a necessary ingredient. Without hard work and preparation, success at anything is less likely. In our world, the idea of random success seems unfair and is not something one can hope to occur.

Even though we want to believe hard work is enough, we know that our world is random. Too strong a belief in randomness and its influence over our life is debilitating. Despite this contradiction, we want to believe we can influence life even with the powerful and overpowering influence of random events. As Israel Zangwill, an English dramatist proclaimed,

“Take from me the hope that I can change the future, and you will send me mad.”

Israel Zangwill – Ghetto Tragedies

In his excellent books, Nassim Taleb provides an interesting perspective on the situation related to the idea of randomness and how it affects our lives. His perspective seems influenced by his work as a Trader on Wall Street.

An excellent point he explains in his books is how we are a backward looking species, and our hindsight bias makes past events seem less random than they were. Our brains automatically fill in the missing pieces. He artfully explains how our biased brain works and how randomness affects us. He often cites and uses the work of Nobel prize-winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky, who examined how our biases impact the decisions we make under uncertainty. They concluded that life often leads us to misread reality and have “Mental Illusions”. (see Undoing Needed because Mental Illusions Impact Us).

While he documents that we are designed by nature to fool ourselves, as Kahneman & Tversky’s work has shown, we have an opportunity to tilt the table in our favor. The opportunity exists because we evolved in a much slower moving world than exists today. As he notes, this means we are more susceptible to chance, but we can improve our chances by being prepared like nature.

As he explains, great and extensive preparation cannot and does not cause success, but it does improve the chances for success. It can tilt the tables in our favor and improve the probability of success. From my reading, it means that although hard work to prepare cannot cause success, success without hard work and preparation is unlikely.

He further explains that, unlike nature, we do not overprepare but should. Nature, in essence, prepares for the next occurrence by over-preparing for higher exposure. This is why nature builds redundancy with spare parts, i.e. 2 kidneys. Over preparing, as is done by nature, which we are a part of (see Updated: We are Just Talking Apes), also means we have the capacity to exceed expectations. This function by nature is also documented by Jane Benyus in Biomimicry (see Parallel NOT Linear Means Create Positive AND Prevent Negative)

Instead of building more capacity, we do the opposite by using leverage such as debt or worst case scenario preparation. As he notes, this type of testing cannot be only for what has already happened because the data for what could be worse does not exist. This becomes even more relevant with ongoing climate change. He calls this naive empiricism. As he explained, contrary to conventional wisdom, our body of knowledge does not increase from a series of confirmatory observations (i.e. Turkey killed 1 day, but all other days were ok, so we cannot predict).

As Yogi Berra mused:

“Its tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Some insights from these books were:

1. We are more emotional than we are rational. We can train ourselves to be more rational, reasonable, or logical; but we need emotions to be able to function effectively. Training our emotions is good but we must remember that we cannot be Spock from Star Trek because we could never make decisions without emotions.

2. Wild success is possible but we need luck. Luck however cannot happen without being prepared, and being prepared takes hard work. Like Gladwell explained in “Blink” and “Outliers”, we can trust our gut to make great decisions but that gut must first be trained well – 10,000 hours to become an expert. In other words, the age old saying that hard work leads to success is only partially right. Hard work cannot guarantee success, but without the work, success because highly unlikely.

3. A final point that has stayed with me from “Black Swan” was “the absence of evidence is not evidence of its absence.” This is something I now apply to many aspects of my life. He provides examples such as breast milk, which they did not initially see as beneficial because of what was measured. They only looked to see if problems were caused, not if benefits were gained. No evidence of benefits does not mean there were none.

Nassim Taleb seems to suggest we should work to generate comprehensive improvements by working like nature. As he details, we cannot rely on randomness but can generate comprehensive improvements by creating net-positive, pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits by over preparing. Please share how you overprepare and how it has helped. I look forward to hearing from you.

PS For a different perspective on the same ideas – see Its All Meaningless! Here is How to Create Meaning! and Making Sense of Chaos, Meaninglessness, Disorientation

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Beyond Order and Status Quo

“Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one feels thirsty or forging weapons after the war has already begun.” – Nei Jing

Is order the ultimate principle of wisdom? Is order better or is it just easier? Is what we see the whole story? Order is another way of saying keep things as they are. Of course curing a disease after it is experienced is like digging a well after feeling thirsty or building weapons after the war has begun. Is that the best we can do, just maintain order? Should we attempt to cure it before? (which would be prevention), how would we know if worked if what was prevented never happened? If prevention works, nothing happens – we can do better.

We can do better than just maintain the status quo. Anything that attempts to keep things as they are is impeding progress. Beyond efforts to prevent problems, evidence from Dr. Wilde’s Risk Homeostasis Theory indicate we never actually prevent problems, they are just moved.517J05w6c1L._SX321_BO1,204,203,200_

Additional information in “FoolProof” suggests not only don’t prevention efforts work because they just move risk and problems, but these these well-intentioned efforts actually create a backlash with unintended problems. One example of many is when well-intentioned people in the NFL created helmets to prevent head, teeth and eye injuries. While many of those injuries subsided, without accounting for delayed head trauma,  other injuries increased. Injuries were moved. Other injuries such as those to the neck and spine increased because a helmet protected head helped players feel safe enough to use their head when tackling (see video).

Of course the hidden problem of CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encepholapthy famously discussed in the movie “Concussion” with Will Smith is another example of a backlash from attempts to improve safety.

A different approach is possible, one that looks forward toward what is being created instead of backward in an attempt to avoid or prevent. Instead of just trying to make it less bad, we should focus on how to create more good (see), from a systems perspective. This approach about a better future has many benefits and is what Dr. Wilde calls expectationism. He also explains why this approach would be more effective as it also improves overall well-being.

After all, the focus on the future is what has helped us realize all progress. Figure what you want, clarify that picture  – determine that idealized outcome, determine what will demonstrate progress, not outcome measures, then work at creating it. As you continually measure progress, you will understand how to correct and improve the path of creating that idealized outcome. Don’t be frustrated if you get off path, they say the rocket to the moon was off course 96% of the time but with continued process improvements, the desired outcome was achieved.

Remember the desired  idealized outcome should be measurable so you will know something was accomplished. Nassim Taleb described in his 2008 book the Black Swan an instance when a rider enters a taxi cab and tells the driver, “Don’t take me to the airport.” Of course this leaves the driver confused because he doesn’t know what to do or how to act because not going to the airpot is not measurable. It is simply a nonevent. Determine a measurable outcome so you can document and measure what you achieve!

Build on the idea of expectationism by creating more good, not just less bad (also see here, here, here, here).  Efforts to decrease undesirable effects don’t work. Rather than just maintain order, lets make it better by focusing on and work on creating what is desired and what could be.

I look forward to hearing about the progress you create.

—

Be Well’r,
Craig Becker
Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!