The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

This brings me back once again to Menodotus and the treatment of the turkey problem and how to not be a sucker for the past. The empirical doctor’s approach to the problem of induction was to know history without theorizing from it. Learn to read history, get all the knowledge you can, do not frown on the anecdote, but do not draw any causal links, do not try to reverse engineer too much—but if you do, do not make big scientific claims. Remember that the empirical skeptics had respect for custom: they used it as a default, a basis for action, but not for more than that. This clean approach to the past they called epilogism[39]

But most historians have another opinion. Consider the representative introspection What Is History? by Edward Hallett Carr. You will catch him explicitly pursuing causation as a central aspect of his job. You can even go higher up: Herodotus, deemed to be the father of the subject, defined his purpose in the opening of his work:

To preserve a memory of the deeds of the Greeks and barbarians, “and in particular, beyond everything else, to give a cause [emphasis mine] to their fighting one another.”

You see the same with all theoreticians of history, whether Ibn Khaldoun, Marx, or Hegel. The more we try to turn history into anything other than an enumeration of accounts to be enjoyed with minimal theorizing, the more we get into trouble. Are we so plagued with the narrative fallacy?[40]

We may have to wait for a generation of skeptical-empiricist historians capable of understanding the difference between a forward process and a reverse one.

Just as Popper attacked the historicists in their making claims about the future, I have just presented the weakness of the historical approach in knowing the past itself.

After this discussion about future (and past) blindness, let us see what to do about it. Remarkably, there are extremely practical measures we can take. We will explore this next.

Chapter Thirteen: APPELLES THE PAINTER, OR WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU CANNOT PREDICT? [41]

You should charge people for advice—My two cents here—Nobody knows anything, but, at least, he knows it—Go to parties

ADVICE IS CHEAP, VERY CHEAP

It is not a good habit to stuff one’s text with quotations from prominent thinkers, except to make fun of them or provide a historical reference. They “make sense,” but well-sounding maxims force themselves on our gullibility and do not always stand up to empirical tests. So I chose the following statement by the überphilosopher Bertrand Russell precisely because I disagree with it.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure. …

But so long as men are not trained [emphasis mine] to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets … For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.