When black swans attack
Recently, I’ve been putting myself to sleep listening to The Black
Swan audiobook. Suffering insomnia recently, in part due to stress of
work, school and home (all of which symptoms of not enough money or
time), this book is technical enough to put me to sleep, while being
thought provoking enough to awaken my mind in the morning as I literally
do the same. I’ve slept through some chapters, waking up in the middle
of others.
Giveth and taketh away
My ego likes the book as it reinforces old personal beliefs that
probability and statistics are ways to misrepresent reality. Just as I
feel a bit superior to true believers though, my feathered friend
reminds me of my naivety in believing I’m not forced into a false sense
of safety in many other areas of life.
This thin ice of safety I’ve been skating on with an ever increasing
amount of group re-assuring peers is always a moment away from plunging
us into the icy waters of reality. As this book highlights, most of us
will dry off only to find other patches of sturdy looking ice to stand
on.
My attempt at using metaphors may be failing, whereas The Black Swan
adeptly described how misrepresentation of data, prolonged periods of
normality and the burden of knowledge sets many of us up for unexpected
catastrophes in life.
For example, finance people using flawed models to fudge risk ratings
combined with a long period of time with few or no crashes leads people
to invest without comprehending the real possibility for a crash.
Everyday we see something not happen, we mistakenly tell ourselves it
is even less likely to happen. In contrast, we may also go the other
extreme, thinking that something we expect to happen is more likely to
occur tomorrow because it didn’t happen yesterday (think doubling up on
roulette!). Both these assumptions are without merit as there is no
rhyme or reason to reality. Sure, there may never have been
an occurrence of a roulette ball falling on black 1,000 times in
succession, but to declare such an event is IMPOSSIBLE would be
dishonest. Unlikely, sure. Impossible, well, nothing is impossible once
it happens.
3am again and I don’t feel I’m doing the book, myself or any readers
justice, so will try again when not so energetically comatose.
Okay, picking up this draft a few days later, on board a flight back from Manila to Hong Kong.
Have just finished listening to the last chapter of The Black Swan,
in which one several philosophies were mentioned, two of which I’ve been
using myself and sharing with others for some time. These two ways of
thinking I pieced together from my own influences and here I’ll repeat
them alongside a few other principles/philosophies I try to adhere to
(though often let myself fall into the common trap of thinking my
problems are as big as the world):
– don’t run for trains
I was pleasantly surprised to hear this mentioned in The Back Swan!
I’m in no way the first person to think of it, but I did (insert ego
inflating line here!)…
I spent close to 10 years living in Japan, some of which in bustling
Tokyo. Seeing the herds of commuters rushing for public transport to
rush to work just in time reinforced my feelings against this. I have
the sort of personality which likes to arrive early, calmy. I also
despise the feeling of being embarrassed/beaten by the system, by
rushing for a train or train door, not knowing if I will make it.
Some will call me a control freak for certain things, such as
filenaming conventions, HR procedures, the way I brush my teeth – the
things I know I can control. For things out of my control (little
insignificant things especially) I don’t allow myself the disappointment
of things not going as expected.
– Expect the worst & hope for the best
As the last sentence segwayed to, this is a phrase someone once told
me (commonly Edison is mis-credited with being its creator?). If you
expect the worst and hope for the best, you’ll never be disappointed. So
true!
– It’s all relative, you insignificant little being
Again in Japan, I remember trying to calm down a friend who was
letting herself be overwhelmed by some issues in her life. I think as it
was raining, I told her to look at the drops of water on the ground (I
think this is accurate, though I may be recalling advice read
elsewhere!). When seeing the drop of water, I had suggested to put
herself in the mind of an ant and to imagine how big an event of a few
drops of rain must seem to them. Though we may know the insignificance
of those drops of water and even the existence of the ant and its
colony, to the ant, it is very much a big, surprising and likely
stressful event. When imagine there is something potentially looking
down on us, as we do to ants, then any problems we feel are so large and
stressful really are not so significant in the grand scheme of things.
– there’s always someone worse off than yourself
Yet another feeling I came to realize in my early 20′s in Japan. I
had been doing volunteer work for a few different organizations helping
impoverished and unfortunate people. Hearing tragic tales and seeing
people struggling with such terrible circumstances always helped put my
own financial, relationship or other personal issues in perspective.
I think some people need regular exposure to such tragedies to stop
them feeling sorry for themselves and put their own problems in the
correct scope. Even in my close family, there are some who I hope a
strong exposure of this kind could give them better perspective (though
my thoughts on influencing people to change are still undecided!).
– Never regret anything
One of my seniors at karate drove me home after training one night
and advised along the way “You can never have MADE the wrong decision,
because it is already made. In this The Black Swan book, it talks about
outlying possibilities, re-writing history is still definitely
considered very unlikely. Unlikely enough that any energy or stress used
in regretting that which we can’t change is a waste. While we can learn
from our past choices and possibly act different the next time around,
time spent worrying about it after the fact could be better spent on,
well, anything else..
Another point covered in the book, which I’ve not thought so
consciously about but will try and apply it and be aware of it from now
is to dictate life on my own terms. Whether some of those
terms/values/ethics/customs/rituals are gleamed from read books, watched
movies, heard conversations or other, defining what you believe in and
APPLYING it in everything you do, should eventually take you where you
want to go.
Though not a big fan of self-help books, I have been more receptive
of late to business advice books which often feature anecdotes from such
books. There a common themes amongst advices in many of these about
visualizing, action and actively taking control of your own life, which I
feel I’m at least becoming more open to the concept…
