Taleb Concepts Vol. 2
When being rational means knowing less - lecturing birds on how to fly, convexity, tinkering, and the causal arrow.
Epistemology, the inquiry into the nature of knowledge, is a central concern of Taleb's books. He is particularly concerned with how knowledge comes about, heavily favoring practitioners over theorists. He often refers to the "direction of the causal arrow" in a cause and effect relationship - does education lead to prosperity, or does prosperity lead to education? Do practitioners start by studying theory, or do theorists create top-down conclusions about practice?
Informed by his own experience as a trader, Taleb argues that this conflation of cause and effect can be dangerous. From Antifragile: "Traders trade → traders figure out techniques and products → academic economists find formulas and claim traders are using them → new traders believe academics → blowups (from theory-induced fragility)."
In a world ruled by randomness and uncertainty where it is foolish to draw broad conclusions from historical data, abstract theoretical knowledge is of little use. Real, durable, and (critically) non-harmful knowledge comes from doing. This is the Talebian version of the distinction between book smarts and street smarts.
We've previously defined via negativa, which says that observing and drawing conclusions based on what something isn't is less prone to fallacies than focusing on what it is. The way to gain robust, via-negativa-style knowledge is to engage in a sort of trial and error Taleb calls convex tinkering.
Tinkering is acting rather than theorizing, exposing yourself to randomness and the workings of time, keeping what works and discarding what doesn't. Think of Fleming discovering penicillin, the Wright brothers working on the design of the condor, or the guy at 3M who accidentally invented sticky notes. Convexity is an asymmetry of exposure to gains and errors where potential losses are smaller than potential payoffs. Convex tinkering, then, is trying things that, if they don't work they don't cost you much, but if they do work the benefit could be massive.
Convex tinkering benefits from uncertainty while academic theories are generally threatened by it. What if something arises in the real world that we didn't consider in the lab? By engaging in this breed of trial and error, the volatility and randomness that, as Incerto shows, govern more of our world than we think, are on our side.
A great majority of the technological advances and inventions in human history have come about this way - most modern medicine, most architectural principles, electricity, telephony, the jet engine, the suitcase with wheels, etc.
Consider the more tangible example of cooking. All recipes are a product of convex tinkering. Add a new ingredient to the pot; the downside is momentary displeasure, the upside is creating the next great dish. It is not possible to read a textbook on the science of taste receptors, olfactory stimulation, and the chemical makeup of different foods and design the perfect dish without tasting it. It's also nearly impossible to reverse engineer a dish based on nutritional labels. You have to have "contact with the earth," and you need to taste the food in order to call yourself a chef - especially to advise other chefs on how to cook and regulate what ingredients they can use.
Cooking is not the realm of lab coats, chalkboards, or textbooks. Taleb argues that the same goes for most other domains that deal with randomness or hail from Extremistan. This brings us to what he calls lecturing birds on how to fly.
Most definitions of technology are something like the application of scientific knowledge to practical projects, which leads us to believe that the flow of knowledge goes from the institutions of science and academia to practitioners. As usual, Taleb says otherwise. From Antifragile: "knowledge is presented in the following manner: basic research yields scientific knowledge, which in turn generates technologies, which in turn lead to practical applications, which in turn lead to economic growth and other seemingly interesting matters." He then goes into the bird metaphor where a group of Harvard professors gives a speech filled with jargon and formulas regarding the flight of birds followed by a demonstration of a bird flying - all thanks to their hard work and genius, of course. No one considers the possibility of birds not needing lectures to know how to fly.
Taleb inverts the causal arrow and contends that knowledge originates from random tinkering, is then collectively understood via heuristics, and is then carried out and passed on via practice and apprenticeship. Academics and bureaucrats, in his view, observe practitioners, create theories, give each other titles and awards, and claim credit for keeping all the birds in flight.
The implications of this reversal are heavy. As with most of Taleb's concepts, at their root, they deal with very fundamental questions. The logical conclusion of the bias toward practice over theory is to question our classical understanding of knowledge and rationality. We are usually concerned with knowing exactly how and why something works. However, as discussed at length in the books, our reasoning is often flawed and can lead us to partake in risky behavior. Could it be more rational to, rather than erroneously reasoning about the way things are, leave that job to the generations of trial and error before you and simply expose yourself to convexity?
From Fooled by Randomness: "We humans have been under the belief that we were endowed with a beautiful machine for thinking and understanding things... the problem with thinking is that it causes you to develop illusions. And thinking may be such a waste of energy! who needs it!"