{"id":845,"date":"2008-03-09T14:15:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=845"},"modified":"2008-03-09T14:15:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T20:15:00","slug":"nassim-taleb%e2%80%99s-black-swan-a-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/03\/nassim-taleb%e2%80%99s-black-swan-a-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Nassim Taleb\u2019s Black Swan – a Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> have just finished Nassim Taleb<\/a>\u2019s Black Swan<\/span>. What a crock.<\/p>\n

There is a lot wrong with Taleb\u2019s book, not least the dismal neologism of the Black Swan. History is littered with less esoteric (i.e. banal) examples of Taleb\u2019s restatements of the bleeding obvious – Montezuma<\/span><\/a>\u2019s reception of Cortes<\/span><\/a>, anyone?<\/p>\n

Still, let\u2019s ignore the hackneyed theme and focus instead on one of the props Taleb employs to boost his word count – the narrative fallacy.<\/p>\n

Taleb devotes a whole chapter to it (six), despite filling his book with irritating little \u201cnarratives\u201d (parables, perhaps?).<\/p>\n

He offers us the mundane insight that one of the ways we try and make sense of the world, and ourselves, is through telling stories. No, really! And guess what? These stories are unreliable means of predicting the future. Reading a couple of history books should set you straight. And you might learn more than Taleb has to offer.<\/p>\n

So should we give up on story-telling? Don\u2019t worry, Nassim hasn\u2019t kicked the habit: <\/p>\n

there may be a way to use a narrative – but for a good purpose. Only a diamond can cut a diamond; we can use our ability to convince with a story that conveys the right message…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The right message…<\/p>\n

So, there you have it – the pathetic circular argument. Using \u201cnarrative\u201d for \u201ca good purpose\u201d (can we not just call it preaching, and be done?) is fine as long as you are delivering (drum roll) … the right message!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have just finished Nassim Taleb\u2019s Black Swan. What a crock. There is a lot wrong with Taleb\u2019s book, not least the dismal neologism of the Black Swan. History is littered with less esoteric (i.e. banal) examples of Taleb\u2019s restatements of the bleeding obvious – Montezuma\u2019s reception of Cortes, anyone? Still, let\u2019s ignore the hackneyed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[492],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3391,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/3391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}