I like this book, and agree with its main points. You can find those by searching for "Black Swan" on Wikipedia. Having said I like the book, my comments below start with a few complaints.
Complaint 1. I don't really like the analogy of the black swan from which the book takes its title. Taleb's idea is that biologists used to say that swans had to be white, and if it wasn't white, it wasn't a swan. Then a species of black swan was discovered in Australia. He claims this is an example of a new, totally unexpected event. Everyone knew that Australia existed before, so I doubt anyone was very surprised that when they studied a new place they would find a differently-colored bird. If there are swans on Alpha Centauri, I don't think we have strong predictions about what color they should be. The more surprising black swan events are ones where people believed they understood why a situation not only was a certain way but that it had to be that way. I don't think anyone claimed that there was something about whiteness that was essential to the workings of the bird -- everyone knew it was basically an accident or the result of some mundane force of natural selection. I suppose "black swan" is a pleasing image, amenable to succinct explanation, and has a few properties of what he's getting at.
Complaint 2. Taleb comes across as not very nice, and not very mature in the area of human relationships. The book is full of cheap shots and fantasies about doing bad things to the people he doesn't like. He believes experts and economists and so forth dispense worthless advice, and I bet he's pretty much right. It sounds like he has (figuratively) jumped up and down and shouted this at them for some time, and they not only don't switch careers, they become defensive or go on the attack against him. But there's nose-thumbling -- with very little compassion and very little tolerance. It's very hard to give up your career and watch your earnings plummet, and all people will go through great psychological contortions to justify keeping on as they are. The advice all the rest of us give and get is to not childishly belittle our opponents. On the other hand, he has gotten as far in spreading his message as writing a bestseller. Possibly being mean gets attention, and readers might accept his ideas once he has their attention. Ironically, he suggests in a few places that he views religion as a positive thing, but he hardly shows many religious virtues, Christian or other.
Complaint 3. At one point he describes what happens when people are asked to make estimates of some number, and give a range describing their certainty. On average people are far more confident than they should be. Perhaps 50% of the people are wrong about the number being within a range they were 90% confident it would be within. He then addresses the exceptions. Some people, he notes, will give a ridiculously wide range. If asked for a 90% confidence interval of how many lovers Catherine the Great had, they might say between zero and 10,000. He says they are just not playing the game, and they might as well say so. But there is also the possibility that they are attuned to black swans, that they are taking seriously the possibility that there is some important factor they aren't aware of or haven't considered. (Even 10,000 could be a different lover every day for 30 years). It's unfortunate to dismiss people who actually agree with his point. (None of the numbers above are from the book, but they are good enough to make the point.)
Complaint 4. He makes a key distinction in the book between "mediocristan", where things follow predictable distributions and stunning surprises don't occur (height, weight, longevity), and "extremistan", the realm of black swans (individual wealth, book sales, etc.). I think it is a valid and useful distinction. He admits at one point that for him personally, mediocristan is not very interesting, and what he values in life is in the excitement of extremistan. Self-consciously or not, this is reflected in the very terms he chose. I for one prefer to live in the more predictable realm. If I were picking terms to reflect my values I might call it "harmonistan" or "calmistan" instead of "mediocristan", and might call the other place "wackistan" or "chaoticstan" instead of "extremistan".
Observation 1. A substantial part of the evidence in the book is the failings of human reasoning and intuition, most of which I had run across recently in reading an introductory psychology textbook ("Psychology", 2004, David G. Myers). But changing the world often does involve repackaging old ideas in different ways, hoping to find one to get people's attention. The book is something of a bestseller, so it's on the right track of making these truths more widely known.
Approval 1. I did especially like his section on silent evidence, quite in line with thoughts I have had for some time (see my earlier post "When the news is bad for you"). A cute instance is his consideration of the belief among gamblers that people have beginner's luck, something a clear-thinking person would be inclined to attribute to superstition. He observes that people who started out gambling and had bad luck quite probably stopped gambling, and it was initial success that got people hooked so that they are among the peers that a gambler considers. The ones who had bad luck initially are off doing something else.
Approval 2. He denigrates the economic advice of others and repeatedly implies he has a better idea. I think he quite possibly does. His investment philosophy is buried in the book, but when he finally gets to it he easily describes it in very few words. The gist is to place most of your assets in a very safe vehicle such as T-bills. Put the rest in a variety of highly speculative ventures, because while there's only a small chance that any one of them will pay off, the one that does could give a huge benefit. He doesn't like the more conventional strategy of looking for a fairly good rate of return balanced against some risk because our estimates of the risk are way too low. Brief answers are often the best, especially when a primary contention is that other people think they know too much.
Approval 3. He notes that he grew up in Lebanon in what was a peaceful, stable place, until suddenly the entire world he knew fell apart with the civil war of 1975. He implies that some people try to dismiss his work by saying his thinking is the result of his own personal trauma. I am inclined to accept the factual gist of that observation but frame it differently. His early experience has opened him up to see unpleasant truths that most of the rest of us are not primed to see.
Approval 4. I am fully with him in one key respect. A great deal of the time, the right answer to interesting questions is: "I don't know."
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Good enough
I read an interesting book within the past couple years called "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less", by Barry Schwartz. I realize that it has actually had some influence on how I live my life, which is rare for a book.
When we face a problem, there are two ways to approach it: As an "optimizer", who seeks the best solution, and as a "satisficer", who seeks a solution that is good enough. Many of us, much of the time, feel obligated to optimize, by educating ourselves on the alternatives, reviewing them thoroughly, and choosing the best one according to our criteria. To the extent we fail, we feel guilty. Other people may let us know that we missed some great bargain, or the even better restaurant, and we cooperate with them in feeling that we failed.
It's worth optimizing about the big things in life: what city to live in, what house to buy, what job to take. It is worth optimizing money when it concerns large amounts -- bargaining carefully for the best price on your home or the best salary at your job. We can sometimes regret not having devoted as much attention to these questions as we should.
But for the less important aspects of life you can often find a solution that is good enough.
Consider driving to an event in a city where parking is an issue and you may have to park at some distance from the event. The density of cars parked beside the road increases as you near the event, but there are other reasons than your event for local concentrations of cars. You can't see by peering ahead where the last space is you could park in (think fire hydrants, driveways). You are likely to go just a little farther. Often you get it pretty much right. Less often you find you have passed the last available space and need to turn around and go back to those spaces you passed. Often when you get there the previously closest space is taken and you have to go back a little bit farther. This is frustrating. The satisficing solution is to park at the first space that is good enough, and not let yourself feel incompetent if as you walk towards the event you see an empty space that was significantly closer. You may have saved yourself the possible frustration of having to turn around. More importantly, you have saved time of your life spent looking for a parking space. You could be walking instead, something we generally find inherently more relaxing and in line with our values. This is especially relevant if you are the sort of person who regularly runs several miles for exercise.
Consider driving with a friend to a place you have never been before and will probably never go again. You know one way to go, but there might be a better way. You can study a map for some time, determine the route you want, and spend your trip verifying you are following the path you have charted. Or you could spend the entirety of a slightly longer trip talking with your friend.
At the supermarket you can look at the different brands and different package sizes and spend considerable time finding the best buy. Or you can just pick one and spend less of your life in the activity known as shopping.
When you vacuum your house you can dig into every corner, every time, and chase every last bit of dust. Or you might reflect that within a day or so the natural accumulation of dirt will have rendered the benefit of your more thorough cleaning imperceptible. The goal could shift from having a house that is (periodically) "extremely clean", to having one that is "not very dirty", or in other words "good enough".
Now, for all the caveats:
For some people, optimization habits are just a part of the fabric of their life and define "how one ought to live".
Successful optimization shows competence and mastery, and for many people such opportunities are not abundant.
Some people just really enjoy shopping, including getting the best deal on small items. Some inherently enjoy feeling that their house is extraordinarily clean, even if briefly. Enjoyment is good.
Finding the best route to a particular destination could increase one's knowledge of the lay of the land, allowing faster trips when time really is important.
Sometimes it really is important to optimize on even small amounts of money, since they do add up. But it might be prudent to look at one's budget as a whole to see where larger amounts of money are at stake. You could feel that you are living a frugal life by checking out the brands, whereas ten times that amount of money is at stake in what you might have to admit are luxuries if you were forced to think about it.
For some people, it may be hard to make a mix of optimizing and satisficing decisions. Perhaps they are not only on a tight budget, but if they relaxed their buying habits in one area of life it might spread to areas that are more important. My mother, a child of the depression, sometimes washed lettuce by using a small stream of water and shutting it off after finishing each leaf before picking up the next one, though I don't think water was ever expensive or in short supply in her life. But it was part of an attitude of frugality.
There can also be an instance of the "free rider" problem. If few people were engaged in careful comparison shopping, the stores could gradually raise their prices. Being confident that all prices are "good enough" depends on optimizers who do pay attention to which store has milk that is five cents cheaper. People who carefully compare prices are doing a service for the rest of us, even if as individuals it may not be in their immediate self-interest to do so. I wonder sometimes to what extent Whole Foods is an entire chain built on customers who are satisficers with regard to price. I'm not actually feeling guilty about the "free rider" problem, since there is no looming shortage of comparison shoppers.
The next step is to be willing to go public: tell your friends that you aren't troubled that you spent a few extra dollars on something because it's not a priority for you. What you paid was good enough.
When we face a problem, there are two ways to approach it: As an "optimizer", who seeks the best solution, and as a "satisficer", who seeks a solution that is good enough. Many of us, much of the time, feel obligated to optimize, by educating ourselves on the alternatives, reviewing them thoroughly, and choosing the best one according to our criteria. To the extent we fail, we feel guilty. Other people may let us know that we missed some great bargain, or the even better restaurant, and we cooperate with them in feeling that we failed.
It's worth optimizing about the big things in life: what city to live in, what house to buy, what job to take. It is worth optimizing money when it concerns large amounts -- bargaining carefully for the best price on your home or the best salary at your job. We can sometimes regret not having devoted as much attention to these questions as we should.
But for the less important aspects of life you can often find a solution that is good enough.
Consider driving to an event in a city where parking is an issue and you may have to park at some distance from the event. The density of cars parked beside the road increases as you near the event, but there are other reasons than your event for local concentrations of cars. You can't see by peering ahead where the last space is you could park in (think fire hydrants, driveways). You are likely to go just a little farther. Often you get it pretty much right. Less often you find you have passed the last available space and need to turn around and go back to those spaces you passed. Often when you get there the previously closest space is taken and you have to go back a little bit farther. This is frustrating. The satisficing solution is to park at the first space that is good enough, and not let yourself feel incompetent if as you walk towards the event you see an empty space that was significantly closer. You may have saved yourself the possible frustration of having to turn around. More importantly, you have saved time of your life spent looking for a parking space. You could be walking instead, something we generally find inherently more relaxing and in line with our values. This is especially relevant if you are the sort of person who regularly runs several miles for exercise.
Consider driving with a friend to a place you have never been before and will probably never go again. You know one way to go, but there might be a better way. You can study a map for some time, determine the route you want, and spend your trip verifying you are following the path you have charted. Or you could spend the entirety of a slightly longer trip talking with your friend.
At the supermarket you can look at the different brands and different package sizes and spend considerable time finding the best buy. Or you can just pick one and spend less of your life in the activity known as shopping.
When you vacuum your house you can dig into every corner, every time, and chase every last bit of dust. Or you might reflect that within a day or so the natural accumulation of dirt will have rendered the benefit of your more thorough cleaning imperceptible. The goal could shift from having a house that is (periodically) "extremely clean", to having one that is "not very dirty", or in other words "good enough".
Now, for all the caveats:
For some people, optimization habits are just a part of the fabric of their life and define "how one ought to live".
Successful optimization shows competence and mastery, and for many people such opportunities are not abundant.
Some people just really enjoy shopping, including getting the best deal on small items. Some inherently enjoy feeling that their house is extraordinarily clean, even if briefly. Enjoyment is good.
Finding the best route to a particular destination could increase one's knowledge of the lay of the land, allowing faster trips when time really is important.
Sometimes it really is important to optimize on even small amounts of money, since they do add up. But it might be prudent to look at one's budget as a whole to see where larger amounts of money are at stake. You could feel that you are living a frugal life by checking out the brands, whereas ten times that amount of money is at stake in what you might have to admit are luxuries if you were forced to think about it.
For some people, it may be hard to make a mix of optimizing and satisficing decisions. Perhaps they are not only on a tight budget, but if they relaxed their buying habits in one area of life it might spread to areas that are more important. My mother, a child of the depression, sometimes washed lettuce by using a small stream of water and shutting it off after finishing each leaf before picking up the next one, though I don't think water was ever expensive or in short supply in her life. But it was part of an attitude of frugality.
There can also be an instance of the "free rider" problem. If few people were engaged in careful comparison shopping, the stores could gradually raise their prices. Being confident that all prices are "good enough" depends on optimizers who do pay attention to which store has milk that is five cents cheaper. People who carefully compare prices are doing a service for the rest of us, even if as individuals it may not be in their immediate self-interest to do so. I wonder sometimes to what extent Whole Foods is an entire chain built on customers who are satisficers with regard to price. I'm not actually feeling guilty about the "free rider" problem, since there is no looming shortage of comparison shoppers.
The next step is to be willing to go public: tell your friends that you aren't troubled that you spent a few extra dollars on something because it's not a priority for you. What you paid was good enough.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
How to treat the terminally unconscious
How should we treat a person who is terminally ill and terminally unconscious? For people who believe in an afterlife, considerable attention makes sense, since some sort of essence of the person remains until the time of death before moving on in some fashion. Even for some who don't believe in an afterlife, special attention makes sense as part of customs or traditions.
What about those who don't believe in an afterlife and have no reason within their family customs to give special attention to an unconscious dying person? What do they owe ethically or morally to the unconscious dying person as a person? Beyond basic physical comfort, I suggest the answer is: nothing.
I think large parts of our society do not accept this as a valid position. This was driven home to me when my mother died in November. She was in the hospital on what everyone knew would be her last day. She was profoundly unconscious, not responding to music, voices, or touch. When she was conscious in the few days before that, she had given no sign of recognizing individual family members. She had had a progressive and serious dementia for the past two years.
My father had decided that he did not want to be there on her last day, based on his understanding of the situation. If he thought she would recognize him and he could be of some comfort to her, no one could have kept him away. But he was certain this was not true, so he did not want to go.
In the nursing facility where he lives, a nurse essentially bullied him until he agreed to go to the hospital. Perhaps "bullying" is a strong word, but it had that effect on a man who was frail, grieving, and under the best of circumstances shies away from conflict. She told him that my mother could hear him even if she couldn't respond and that he would regret it later if he didn't go. She would not accept repeated "No thanks" or "I'll think about it". Hopefully most people will agree that she went too far, but I think far too many people believe that she was right. He went to my mother's bedside for an hour or two, but found it an upsetting experience without any benefit.
My father has since expressed dismay that family members were summoned to her bedside at a time when she was terminally unconscious. He feels it was gruesome and disrespectful. I don't share his feeling that it was gruesome or disrespectful to her, though if I had known I would have tried to respect his wishes. I do share his feeling that there was no benefit to her from anyone being there -- for all intents and purposes there was no "her" to benefit from anything any more. He had not been present when his own mother died, and when asked if he regretted that, his answer was an unhesitating "No".
My mother never wavered from atheism in her long life. Her will stated her body was to be cremated in the least expensive manner possible. My father has been an atheist since he was in college and has been quite sure there is no afterlife. There is no doubt in my mind that my father loved my mother as much as one person can love another. It is just his view that when her mind was fully gone, she was gone.
Why is this not acceptable? I can think of various reasons why those who believe in an afterlife would have difficulty with this view. As an aside, the staff took some time alone with my mother to tend to her physical needs just a couple hours before she died, and when they were done the small TV on its swinging arm was against the wall, at a discrete distance and a discrete volume, tuned to a Catholic mass. I personally didn't mind.
There are many people at FUSN who like me might say they believe in something unknown to science, or in a connected web of all existence, or some similar sense of spirit. But I think relatively few would say they believe in an afterlife where a person's personality and memories are preserved. I think that at a moment of contemplating a loved one's death it is understandable to waver from that conviction, and to be open to the possibility of something profound and spiritual going on in a literal sense. Some might consciously or not find themselves acting on a variant of Pascal's wager: if I behave as if this person has a soul and is present to the end, there is nothing lost in any event but much to be gained on the off chance there is.
What I ask is for respect for those of us who feel confident that nothing spiritually momentous is happening at the end of life for a person who is unconscious. That respect should include not assuming we are unloving or cowardly or in denial.
What about those who don't believe in an afterlife and have no reason within their family customs to give special attention to an unconscious dying person? What do they owe ethically or morally to the unconscious dying person as a person? Beyond basic physical comfort, I suggest the answer is: nothing.
I think large parts of our society do not accept this as a valid position. This was driven home to me when my mother died in November. She was in the hospital on what everyone knew would be her last day. She was profoundly unconscious, not responding to music, voices, or touch. When she was conscious in the few days before that, she had given no sign of recognizing individual family members. She had had a progressive and serious dementia for the past two years.
My father had decided that he did not want to be there on her last day, based on his understanding of the situation. If he thought she would recognize him and he could be of some comfort to her, no one could have kept him away. But he was certain this was not true, so he did not want to go.
In the nursing facility where he lives, a nurse essentially bullied him until he agreed to go to the hospital. Perhaps "bullying" is a strong word, but it had that effect on a man who was frail, grieving, and under the best of circumstances shies away from conflict. She told him that my mother could hear him even if she couldn't respond and that he would regret it later if he didn't go. She would not accept repeated "No thanks" or "I'll think about it". Hopefully most people will agree that she went too far, but I think far too many people believe that she was right. He went to my mother's bedside for an hour or two, but found it an upsetting experience without any benefit.
My father has since expressed dismay that family members were summoned to her bedside at a time when she was terminally unconscious. He feels it was gruesome and disrespectful. I don't share his feeling that it was gruesome or disrespectful to her, though if I had known I would have tried to respect his wishes. I do share his feeling that there was no benefit to her from anyone being there -- for all intents and purposes there was no "her" to benefit from anything any more. He had not been present when his own mother died, and when asked if he regretted that, his answer was an unhesitating "No".
My mother never wavered from atheism in her long life. Her will stated her body was to be cremated in the least expensive manner possible. My father has been an atheist since he was in college and has been quite sure there is no afterlife. There is no doubt in my mind that my father loved my mother as much as one person can love another. It is just his view that when her mind was fully gone, she was gone.
Why is this not acceptable? I can think of various reasons why those who believe in an afterlife would have difficulty with this view. As an aside, the staff took some time alone with my mother to tend to her physical needs just a couple hours before she died, and when they were done the small TV on its swinging arm was against the wall, at a discrete distance and a discrete volume, tuned to a Catholic mass. I personally didn't mind.
There are many people at FUSN who like me might say they believe in something unknown to science, or in a connected web of all existence, or some similar sense of spirit. But I think relatively few would say they believe in an afterlife where a person's personality and memories are preserved. I think that at a moment of contemplating a loved one's death it is understandable to waver from that conviction, and to be open to the possibility of something profound and spiritual going on in a literal sense. Some might consciously or not find themselves acting on a variant of Pascal's wager: if I behave as if this person has a soul and is present to the end, there is nothing lost in any event but much to be gained on the off chance there is.
What I ask is for respect for those of us who feel confident that nothing spiritually momentous is happening at the end of life for a person who is unconscious. That respect should include not assuming we are unloving or cowardly or in denial.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)