Is there method in madness? 2 Mad men will help answer this
question. They are not part of a TV show. But they are public figures. If I
could host a dinner party and invite anyone living, these two would be on my
list. And yet at first glance they seem to be antithetical figures. At least
one of them is antifragile. Both think the world we live in is in desperate
need of significant change. And both of them have recently told us how to do
it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is mad about a lot of things. I have
already pilfered the table of contents of
his book, Antifragile, on this site. This book is, by his own admission,
his Magnum Opus. He describes it in many ways, but perhaps most importantly, at
least for me, it is a series of personal essays. Each chapter approaches the
topic of the antifragile. If you are not familiar with the term don’t feel bad.
It is Taleb’s neologism for a state of being which exists to those few who are
brave enough to live life embracing and growing from the inevitable and unpredictable
shocks that will come our way.
These shocks, whether an earthquake or a plague, are going
to happen. We just don’t know when. And so most of us pretend they will never
happen. Taleb calls these events Black Swans. This term is actually from a
philosophical investigation of how people assume things based on limited
knowledge and, in some cases, willful blindness. In England, before ships sailed
to Australia, there were, according to experts, only white swans. But down
under there was a surprise. There they were. Taleb takes this bit of history
and applies it to catastrophic events—the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune that we never saw coming.
If all this sounds like dinner table palaver instead of real
world stuff, think again. Taleb made his voice heard to the hedge fund guys and
bankers he worked between and among for many years. He was well ahead of almost
all of them when he said a black swan was coming. And he was right. The
smartest guys in the room who thought things were never going to change watched
as the stocks dropped and some of the biggest banks and bank accounts
disappeared from the face of the earth. After that, people really started to
listen.
Or did they? Taleb made the transition to the academy-- the
touted expert was brandished about like a trophy, while, at the same time, the
academic departments sharpened their knives in hopes to Caesar him. In other
words, Taleb found out that although there is little of great import that goes
on in most academic departments in most colleges, the players act as if they
are part of Shakespearian dramas. Much ado about nothing is what Taleb found. He
equates the discourse of the university with the discourse of Stalinism. Strong
words. Is he right? I would simply say read the book and see if you agree.
But what I have written so far is the appetizer to the diet that Taleb suggests--both
literally and figuratively. He sets out a tripartite distinction between models
or templates of living. On the left hand column of attributes he groups the
fragile. In the center, the robust, and on the right the antifragile. The book
sets forth the ways in which people chose to live their lives under one of
these rubrics. Since I have already posted the structure of the book I will
instead take what might be his starting point for his Moses moment against
civilization:
At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is,
those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control. The chief ethical
rule is the following: Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the
fragility of others.
What does this mean and why
is it important? Taleb advocates the antifragile position. To live in the
antifragile means to embrace risk, to learn from failure and black swans, and
to eschew any form of timid living that asserts that safety and preventative
measures are the way to grow and live.
The area which most speaks to
me in this respect is the world of academia. I would agree that in the current
climate we are creating a generation of bright students who have been taught
not to take risks. They are told in guidebooks to demonstrate passion when
applying to college or jobs, but the passion that is put forward has been wrapped
in a box marked fragile. Today, being a passionate learner means taking on an
extraordinary load of tough courses and earning all As. For those who think
that the road to success is an Ivy education this is the path they must take. They
must prove that they can rise above anything that comes their way. And the can
certainly never fail anything. And so too with activities and essays. What are
often valued are the star-studded experiences that demonstrate skills of some
sort: athletics, community service, or leadership. The higher the level of
performance the better the chances of admission. For some, this might seem to
be a useful recipe. While Taleb does not address what I am writing about
directly I think what he would want to see more of is passion that has been
burnished through the fires of failure and nurtured through the intellectual pursuits
of the flaneur.
But these days, the game of
life is now under a sword of Damocles (his image) which says: “Failure is not
an option’”. For Both Taleb and for me, this is both misguided and simply
antithetical to the world in which a black swan is always hovering above.
Failure and shocks to the system are what allow us to learn. To see how
accurate this is just look at the scientific method. Endless failed experiments
are necessary for success. But we don’t teach that part of the equation much.
Instead, we teach people to talk about unending success. And it is no wonder.
For a person to become a professor today he or she must have had to go through
the road of great academic achievement from grade school through the PhD.
They have had to keep
themselves in line and to keep themselves in the network of others who are
like-minded. The likes of troublemakers shouting out incendiary critiques to
others is anathema in the academy. Instead, the universities are constantly
reminded to ‘do no harm’. But harm happens anyway. That is Taleb’s point. But
the risk management teams of colleges and universities try to make sure that
every student at a selective school graduates, that teachers give positive
feedback even in cases when students don’t do up to snuff work (I take this
last point from a teacher at an Ivy who critiques the handbook which specifically
directs them to be nice and supportive no matter what). If I had to cite a
literary scene which encapsulates the changes in the academic world in the
previous generation or two it would be the speech given by the University
President near the end of Philip Roth’s wonderful book, Indignation. In a speech to the
entire assembled student body, the President reaches deeply into his store of
rhetoric to rip them to shreds. I won’t go into the reasons why he does so. In
this day and age, it would be impossible for any President to give such a
speech. I think for many people they would assert this is for the better. But not
for Taleb and not for the reviewers of Roth’s book who call for it to be mandatory
reading of students entering college.
Taleb’s tone has always been
that of a guy who knows he is the or at least one of the smartest guys in he
room. For some this will be off-putting. For those who have read the harangues
of Old Testament prophets, or as Taleb himself might prefer, the acerbic and
devastating utterances of Seneca, they will find an echo. But in an irony that
is too good for me not to mention, I hear the voice of another man obsessed
with the inanities of the professoriate, of the political compromises that cost
lives, and especially of a failed economic strategy. Ezra Pound. Pound kept
going deeper into these obsessions until he lost sight of his epic poetic
intentions and became a jabbering anti-Semite instead. He ended his life in
failure and silence. I hope that Taleb will take his anger and intellect to
promote the other poet who he sometimes calls to my mind: Walt Whitman, the
poet who finds in his ease the education of the imagination and the passion for
his fellow men.
Tomorrow I will bookend this
entry with a review of the work of another mad man. He actually describes
himself as an idiot. And yet there are a considerable number of people who
think he is the greatest philosopher ceaselessly writing and speaking today.
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