[PREV - PRIMITIVE_BIOLOGY] [TOP]
IN_DEFENSE_OF_NERDS
April 22, 2008
BLACK_SWAN
"Do nerds tunnel, meaning,
do they focus on crisp
categories and miss
sources of uncertainty?"
-- p.181
Consider the case of Tony the Trader from Brooklyn,
vs. Tobias the math nerd of Wall Street.
Taleb's anecdote about them is cute:
An interviewer asks Tobias what the
odds are that an unrigged coin will
come up heads after a streak of
99 tails-- Tobias answers with a
textbook 50/50, but Tony the Trader
claims there's less than 1% chance
it'll come up heads: obviously the Myself, I would cut Tobias some
coin really is rigged. slack: he gave a text book answer in
the context of a text book question.
Were Tobias actually asked
to bet in that situation, we The question that Taleb
don't know what he would say. asked sounds like the
traditional ones used to
In contrast, Taleb praises get at the problem of
Tony for his ability to "think The Gamblers Fallacy.
outside the box", which in
this case means a refusal to Taleb makes it sound like
take an abstraction seriously. he's going one way, then
This is interesting -- but complains about the silly
Tony's answer is insane just nerd taking the bait,
in practical terms: not anticipating that
Taleb was about to change
If you conclude that the coin is the subject.
rigged, *under no circumstances*
should you bet on the outcome of
the next coin flip.
Someone capable of swapping in a
rigged coin once is capable of
swapping in a different one later, As is typical with me
just as soon as they've convinced reading Taleb: I constantly
smart guys like Tony that they find myself tempted to
know what's going on. complain about minutiae
like this.
I don't think Taleb can
talk for two paragraphs
without saying something
dubious.
LOOSE_FEATHERS
The question is always:
is this just quibbling
about detail, or does it
address the main point?
It's often hard for me to tell.
Sometimes if you drill down and
collect enough little details
they *do* lead somewhere...
and sometimes not.
To continue with the
Defense of the Nerds:
These people are often the
generators of the Black
Swans that Taleb likes to
talk about.
He praises the intelligent management
of a high tech company that let's
it's researchers work on what they
want, in hopes that one or two will
come up with a big result that pays
for the entire effort.
Doesn't Taleb understand
that this is a strategy
for herding nerds? That
nerds are the productive
engine of this enterprise
he's praising?
It is also not a *new*
strategy -- it may currently
be practiced at google,
but it was previously used
at 3m, and I think parts of
IBM and Xerox, and no doubt
Bell Labs, etc.
It meets with mixed success:
Xerox famously managed to
"invent the personal
computer", and then couldn't
think of what to do with it.
And IBM has given up on
the disk drive business,
despite having invented a
lot of the key
technologies (e.g. the
magneto-resistive head).
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