I’m getting very Talebian vibes form this post, the “professor” a Euphemism for his “Intellectual Yet Idiot” stock villain. And the whole idea of Skin in the Game: that the more ‘cost’ someone may incur for their action the more credible their decision making. Talk is cheap: a professor may suffer a certain reputational damage if they are found to be espousing a incorrect theory, but is that cost relative to those who practice it?
However, Taleb himself would caution that not all practitioners are trustworthy or right. The Titanic Submarine comes to mind as someone who bet their life on something and ended up losing that bet, tragically taking the lives of others with them. They put their faith in someone with skin in the game and paid the ultimate price.
Quite so. I haven’t read ‘Skin in the game’ yet, but it was recommended by a friend who read an early version of this post. It looks like it conveys this point exactly.
In response to the caution you referred to, I would agree. In reality we should only be watching practitioners, not listening to them. And then we can only treat the observation as Bayesian evidence.
One problem with this is that most people don’t objectively summarize their lives and post all their consequences online. If we want to get more evidence than we can gather personally, we are going to have to listen to someone.
I think Taleb’s view is to take a more ensemble approach—you can’t be sure of the trustworthiness or the correctness of a single practitioner’s model: but you can see what a group of practitioners do and infer from the failure rate how good the practice is. After all—there is no ‘dead cert.’ - there is always a chance. All we can do is minimize it.
As you say this involves watching—observation. It is one thing to be told “oh well they all do this”—that which is professed to be what’s happening. Teasing out what is happening, and also getting all the unspoken tacit knowledge that makes it work is quite another.
That and, sometimes for this very reason people are protective about the specifics and the important nitty gritty details which make it effective or not.
This might be a tangent, but it reminds me of a comment recently about how deceitful the word “just” is—as in “you can just do things”. Michael Palin has a snappy quip about the word “just”
The use of the word “just” by an Australian [1]means that whatever it is you have to do, it will not be easy, as in “Just pull that sword out of the stone” or “Just split that atom.”
Learning how to do something the way that a group of practioners do may not be as simple as “just observe them” or even “just go like this”. I may be a tremendously complicated path to learn it, involving not only amassing huge reams of data and information—I have a vague memory of Xerox or a competitor hiring Ethnologists to study videos of how people used copy machines. But then internalizing it cold require some form of structure to allow Deliberate Practice.
“You talk the talk but do you walk the walk?”
I’m getting very Talebian vibes form this post, the “professor” a Euphemism for his “Intellectual Yet Idiot” stock villain. And the whole idea of Skin in the Game: that the more ‘cost’ someone may incur for their action the more credible their decision making. Talk is cheap: a professor may suffer a certain reputational damage if they are found to be espousing a incorrect theory, but is that cost relative to those who practice it?
However, Taleb himself would caution that not all practitioners are trustworthy or right. The Titanic Submarine comes to mind as someone who bet their life on something and ended up losing that bet, tragically taking the lives of others with them. They put their faith in someone with skin in the game and paid the ultimate price.
Quite so. I haven’t read ‘Skin in the game’ yet, but it was recommended by a friend who read an early version of this post. It looks like it conveys this point exactly.
In response to the caution you referred to, I would agree. In reality we should only be watching practitioners, not listening to them. And then we can only treat the observation as Bayesian evidence.
One problem with this is that most people don’t objectively summarize their lives and post all their consequences online. If we want to get more evidence than we can gather personally, we are going to have to listen to someone.
I think Taleb’s view is to take a more ensemble approach—you can’t be sure of the trustworthiness or the correctness of a single practitioner’s model: but you can see what a group of practitioners do and infer from the failure rate how good the practice is. After all—there is no ‘dead cert.’ - there is always a chance. All we can do is minimize it.
As you say this involves watching—observation. It is one thing to be told “oh well they all do this”—that which is professed to be what’s happening. Teasing out what is happening, and also getting all the unspoken tacit knowledge that makes it work is quite another.
That and, sometimes for this very reason people are protective about the specifics and the important nitty gritty details which make it effective or not.
This might be a tangent, but it reminds me of a comment recently about how deceitful the word “just” is—as in “you can just do things”. Michael Palin has a snappy quip about the word “just”
Learning how to do something the way that a group of practioners do may not be as simple as “just observe them” or even “just go like this”. I may be a tremendously complicated path to learn it, involving not only amassing huge reams of data and information—I have a vague memory of Xerox or a competitor hiring Ethnologists to study videos of how people used copy machines. But then internalizing it cold require some form of structure to allow Deliberate Practice.
”Just do it like this...”—how do you do THAT!?
I’m sure is more universal than just a product of the seemingly “too easy” “she’ll be right, mate” “no wucking forries” attitude of Australians