Black Swan, Uncertainty and Why I write this Blog

Excuse the metablogging

I started writing this blog with the intention of challenging current ways of thinking, I set out calling for a renaissance or a rebirth, I have not even come close. My blog is boring, I know that, and my language is overly flowery and attempts to be dramatically eloquent, I accept that criticism. But in one thing I am feeling somewhat satisfied in the writing of my blog today and it’s thanks to one of my faithful readers, Katy, who in one of her comments on my blog recommended that I pick up the book “Black Swan” by Nissam Nicholas Taleb (NNT). I did so a couple of weeks ago, (I have great faith in Katy) and I finally started to read it this weekend. It has been a long time since I have read something that so strongly resonated with me and with my purpose here. I have found a new intellectual soulmate in NNT and I want to write a thousand blog posts about his ideas (I won’t, but I could). So this blog with it’s flaws has lead me somewhere I might otherwise not have gone, and if for only that then this blog has served one of it’s purposes. Thanks for the recommendation Katy.

According to NNT the world is an uncertain place where outcomes are largely unknown and random and we rely too much on our knowledge. What we don’t know is more important that what we know, and the unknown unknowns are likely to have a more dramatic impact on our lives than the things we know. But we are inherently uncomfortable with such uncertainty and lack of knowledge, and we remain convinced that some expert or some book somewhere has the secret that will explain everything and of course if you can explain everything you can foretell the future.

In an era of unprecedented knowledge accumulation, specialization, and a seemingly endless supply of experts, we should literally be living in an age of uncommon perfection. Except for those pesky things that NNT calls Black Swans which tend to be the things that define our lives. If we think even on our own lives, how many of our life plans have worked out the way they were planned. Our lives are punctuated by random events. Even though in the retelling of said events, we usually make them sound inevitable and the outcome of knowledge that existed. It reminds me of a saying that my father taught me years ago “hindsight is 20/20”.

Knowledge is something I have pursued in my life somewhat relentlessly, I have as you know from my previous posts, two extensive libraries, and I have even called myself a collector of knowledge. It is one of the reasons this blog is boring, it is full of fancy words I’ve learned in books over the years, and theories that I have studied and I admit to a sense of pride when people ask me if i’ve read all of the books on my bookshelf. NNT has just delivered a slap across my face, probably much needed, because it is not about the knowledge that I have, he tells us; this is mere intellectual folly. It is about the knowledge that I don’t; it doesn’t matter how many books I read, or how much knowledge I absorb, it is but a drop in the bucket to the knowledge that exists, and infinitely smaller when you consider all of the unknowledge out there, or knowledge that we don’t know we don’t know. I have wielded my knowledge like a power tool and I realize now that it is like a hammering a nail with a feather.

In university, in philosophy and political theory circles, it is common to have an epiphany after reading Plato’s “Apology” where the new learned realize that they know nothing and are like Socrates, wise, because they are awestruck by all of the knowledge that they do not know. But when socrates becomes aware that he doesn’t know, he is actually describing a particular kind of knowledge, he is not awestruck by the knowledge that he doesn’t know, it is his awareness of unknowledge that makes him wise, it is his willingness to question everything and his realization that despite all of the answers that are out there, be they in the words of the experts or all the books in the Congress library, there is still more questions to be asked. I am perhaps being audacious in attributing empirical skepticism to Socrates, but we know that he arrived at his wisdom by asking questions of everyone and of being skeptical of the finality of the responses.

There is no certainty in our knowledge, which leads us to the realization that there is no certainty in the outcomes of our lives. That’s tough to take, at least for me. I’ve planned my life meticulously and in spite to the fact that absolutely nothing has worked out for me, I continue to be obsessed with the plan of my own life convinced in the theories and the knowledge and the experience I have that my next plan will be the one that comes true. I am not comfortable with uncertainty, but I think if one is to lead a successful life of sorts then uncertainty must be welcomed and one must open oneself to unknowledge rather than rely on theories about how things will work out. It might just be time to let go of the outcomes I think will happen and embrace the ones that come.