To check the fragility of a given activity and position, check how it feels to have “former” attached to one’s name. Best to select identities that never have “former” in them. Your name is the only true “rigid designation”, one that cannot wash away.
Given that backdrop, Taleb’s misgivings on big data and analytics aren’t at all surprising: “We’re more fooled by noise than ever before, and it’s because of a nasty phenomenon called “big data.” With big data, researchers have brought cherry-picking to an industrial level … Modernity provides too many variables, but too little data per variable. So the spurious relationships grow much, much faster than real information … In other words: Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information … In observational studies, statistical relationships are examined on the researcher’s computer. In double-blind cohort experiments, however, information is extracted in a way that mimics real life … This is not all bad news though: If such studies cannot be used to confirm, they can be effectively used to debunk — to tell us what’s wrong with a theory, not whether a theory is right.”
via Big Data Caveats, Front and Center – Information Management Blogs Article.
Der Maniker, um den es geht, heißt Nassim Nicholas Taleb, und sein Opus Magnum mit dem Titel “Antifragilität” ist in diesen Tagen auf Deutsch erschienen. Es ist, ganz unbescheiden, eine Theorie von allem. Und doch keine Weltformel, weil die Welt ja unverständlich ist und daher auch Nassim Taleb nur weiß, dass er nichts weiß – das weiß er seiner Meinung nach allerdings deutlich besser als alle anderen.
Wie kommt einer dazu, ein derart größenwahnsinniges – und, das sei hier schon mal gesagt – auch irgendwie großartiges Buch zu schreiben? 688 Seiten! Plus weitere Info auf fooledbyrandomness.com! Inklusive frei erfundener “sokratischer” Dialoge mit Fat Tony aus Brooklyn. Und dann dieser obskure Titel: “Antifragilität” – ein Irrsinn.
via “Antifragilität” von Nassim Taleb: Größenwahnsinnig und toll – Wirtschaft – Süddeutsche.de.
Life is about execution rather than purpose.
In his now cult classic book, “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, iconoclastic thinker Nassim Taleb weighs in on such diverse topics as how the “losers” in history eventually prevail, why Thanksgiving turkeys should not make future predictions based strictly on the past and why an increase in theoretical understanding of medicine actually leads to fewer drugs being patented. The arguments he develops are witty, informed by a wide-ranging, targeted erudition. I will leave the non-initiated reader to develop a taste for this undefined and indefinable thinker. But the core of his dichotomy pits the idea of “fragility” against that of “antifragility.” He then relates “fragility” and “antifragility” to a wide array of states of the world that concern us all, and in particular, the presence of government in our lives.