3 ms·

I too have had this impression. For a long time I've been very curious about how this kind of king-making occurs and what the underlying political machinery lo

by api 12y ago

I too have had this impression. For a long time I've been very curious about how this kind of king-making occurs and what the underlying political machinery looks like. I don't buy that it's random or organic. Being a middle class hick from the American Midwest and having attended a regular-tier non-coastal school, it's a bit outside my domain... though I did live in Boston for a while and work a lot around the MIT/Harvard orbit. That gave me a definite sense that there's a caste system at work but not exactly how it works or how one goes about gaining entry (or is tapped for entry). Being admitted to the Right School seems to usually be a prerequisite, though there are exceptions. I'm not saying Taleb is a fool. He's certainly very interesting, but he's not the only thinker in this field by any stretch of the imagination. People have been talking about this stuff since back in the 60s when it was called cybernetics. Then they called it complexity, dynamical systems, evolvable systems, and so forth. Taleb might have added some things, but he did not found the field any more than Stephen Wolfram founded the study of cellular automata. I'm not comparing Wolfram and Taleb. Actually I think they're opposites. Wolfram has a lot of money and a big ego (probably bigger than Taleb's), and he certainly is very smart, but his work doesn't seem to have received the nod of the establishment while Taleb's obviously has. Wolfram is more like a tycoon trying to buy his way into a circle that... well... <sniff sniff>... those who are truly in the club would never stoop that low. Who makes these decisions? If you look at Taleb's background, he certainly has gone through or at least been affiliated with all the right schools. The top-tier (Ivy League if you're in the USA) academic network is (in my opinion) the most powerful aristocratic network in the modern world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Academic_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Academic_... I think what fascinates me the most about the aristocratic networks that run through the top-tier universities and their corporate and governmental orbits is how silent they are. You can make kings with millions in paid PR too, but that's noisy and conveys at least some impression that the PR is indeed being "driven." The real power networks of society seem able to make kings with a wink and a nod and it looks completely organic, often giving the impression that these individuals rose to prominence on pure merit and hard work. Again not saying these individuals don't have merit or that they don't work hard-- I'm sure they do both. But so do millions and millions of other people, and they never get the kind of success the "tapped" or "knighted" see. P. S. You'd probably find Peter Thiel interesting. He's known for being a skeptic of the whole "fooled by randomness" line of thinking. Search for his name on YouTube and select ">20 minutes" length and you can find many interesting talks. I'm looking forward to his book: http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296 http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804... I don't always agree with Thiel, but even when I don't he's one of those people who always makes me think.

Udo 12y ago
> I suppose random king-making could be an example of just the kind of black swan events he talks about. I feel reminded of the George RR Martin quote that "chaos is a ladder". I don't think the rise of Antifragile is a truly chaotic event though, it's largely due to whatever the opposite of the Black Swan idea should be called. I guess the words to use would be planning and brute force... > Is it really organic? I'm skeptical of that. I suppose it's possible... Initially, these things are probably orchestrated by influential PR connections. It can't be entirely predetermined, but I guess some careful research was done to map out the pop-intellectual vacuum where this book was going to position itself. What really put me off was the arrogance with which he casually claims to be the first one to understand what would have to be pretty old concepts in chaos theory, risk management, and engineering. However, I think it's also a clue that he knew exactly what area he was going to successfully claim ownership of. My guess is this book was helped along massively from the outside, but how ever that came to be, at some point the critical mass was reached anyway. By now it doesn't really matter anymore except to a few of us (including me) who bemusedly like to analyze how things are expertly steered by powerful forces. The point is, no matter what my personal feelings about the book and its heritage, it's now the reference everybody has to use when addressing a whole slew of things. Which makes it required reading. Which perpetuates its authority.
- api 12y ago
  Yeah, this sort of "takeover of a field" infuriates a lot of people. I know Wolfram got a ton of flak for implying in A New Kind of Science that he basically invented the study of CAs. He didn't. Like I said: what Taleb is talking about was talked about under the name "cybernetics" in the 60s and "complexity" or "chaos theory" in the 90s. It was a major field of interest for me when I was a student, and the more I think back on it the less I think "antifragile" is anything more than a vapid neologism for ideas that have already been out there. Here's some rough synonyms for antifragile from days gone by: autoadaptive, evolvable, autoconstructive, chaordic, etc. I think autoadaptive is the closest, basically a perfect synonym.
  - Udo 12y ago
    Well, the positive aspect in these cases is that worthwhile concepts are disseminated more broadly. It's interesting that you mention Wolfram in this context. I remember the criticism he received for his book, most of which probably justified. I also remember I liked reading it, in contrast to Antifragile which felt in equal parts tedious and frustrating. Of course I was comparatively young at the time and many of the concepts in it were new to me, but now even in hindsight I still like his presentation and his viewpoints. While on a fundamental level Wolfram, Gladwell, and Taleb may all three technically be in the business of claiming ownership to pre-existing ideas, A New Kind of Science still holds a lot of memorable nuggets for me, while after most chapters of Antifragile I honestly couldn't tell whether I had just consumed any actual content or not. I still hold that Wolfram's book contains vastly more intellectual workmanship than Taleb's, but it may well be the case that Antifragile seemed extra trite because I felt a strong sense of deja vu where A New Kind of Science simply contained immeasurably more (fascinating) stuff I wasn't familiar with.

by api 12y ago

Udo 12y ago

> I suppose random king-making could be an example of just the kind of black swan events he talks about. I feel reminded of the George RR Martin quote that "chaos is a ladder". I don't think the rise of Antifragile is a truly chaotic event though, it's largely due to whatever the opposite of the Black Swan idea should be called. I guess the words to use would be planning and brute force... > Is it really organic? I'm skeptical of that. I suppose it's possible... Initially, these things are probably orchestrated by influential PR connections. It can't be entirely predetermined, but I guess some careful research was done to map out the pop-intellectual vacuum where this book was going to position itself. What really put me off was the arrogance with which he casually claims to be the first one to understand what would have to be pretty old concepts in chaos theory, risk management, and engineering. However, I think it's also a clue that he knew exactly what area he was going to successfully claim ownership of. My guess is this book was helped along massively from the outside, but how ever that came to be, at some point the critical mass was reached anyway. By now it doesn't really matter anymore except to a few of us (including me) who bemusedly like to analyze how things are expertly steered by powerful forces. The point is, no matter what my personal feelings about the book and its heritage, it's now the reference everybody has to use when addressing a whole slew of things. Which makes it required reading. Which perpetuates its authority.

api 12y ago
Yeah, this sort of "takeover of a field" infuriates a lot of people. I know Wolfram got a ton of flak for implying in A New Kind of Science that he basically invented the study of CAs. He didn't. Like I said: what Taleb is talking about was talked about under the name "cybernetics" in the 60s and "complexity" or "chaos theory" in the 90s. It was a major field of interest for me when I was a student, and the more I think back on it the less I think "antifragile" is anything more than a vapid neologism for ideas that have already been out there. Here's some rough synonyms for antifragile from days gone by: autoadaptive, evolvable, autoconstructive, chaordic, etc. I think autoadaptive is the closest, basically a perfect synonym.
- Udo 12y ago
  Well, the positive aspect in these cases is that worthwhile concepts are disseminated more broadly. It's interesting that you mention Wolfram in this context. I remember the criticism he received for his book, most of which probably justified. I also remember I liked reading it, in contrast to Antifragile which felt in equal parts tedious and frustrating. Of course I was comparatively young at the time and many of the concepts in it were new to me, but now even in hindsight I still like his presentation and his viewpoints. While on a fundamental level Wolfram, Gladwell, and Taleb may all three technically be in the business of claiming ownership to pre-existing ideas, A New Kind of Science still holds a lot of memorable nuggets for me, while after most chapters of Antifragile I honestly couldn't tell whether I had just consumed any actual content or not. I still hold that Wolfram's book contains vastly more intellectual workmanship than Taleb's, but it may well be the case that Antifragile seemed extra trite because I felt a strong sense of deja vu where A New Kind of Science simply contained immeasurably more (fascinating) stuff I wasn't familiar with.