Failure is Not an Option, It's a Must

"What's important isn't education; it's apprenticeship. Germany has a huge advantage over the rest of the world as it has a high rate of apprenticeship in its economy. Switzerland used to be the least educated in Europe. Now it's the second most educated; that's why it's going down."

To encourage "swashbucklers" and entrepreneurs, people have to be taught to take intelligent risks - something that universities don't teach. "Universities teach you not to take risks. Because if you make mistakes, you flunk the exam. But in life there is no such thing as a track record of exams. You start from zero. So you have to teach people to fail and take risks."

He sees technology as the most antifragile industry; it has the highest failure rate. "Remarkably the lowest failure rate is in - guess which one - banking. They don't fail."

He invokes once again the evolutionary mechanism. "Everytime you procreate you reproduce yourself. Our DNA has replication error... You have to have some fidelity in replication; you have some error but not too much. Too much and you won't retain the advantages. The same mechanism makes businesses work well."

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"I'm not a professor of economics. I'm a professor of engineering. This is critical. There is no nonsense in engineering. The tolerance for nonsense in economics is monstrously high. In engineering, it's close to zero. If a bridge collapses, economists would spin a story. In engineering, you build another one."

He has a library in Lebanon, where he was born and raised, and another in the US. He spends 300 days a year in his libraries. "Everyday I go to the university and come back. It's more of a social day than a research day. I'm not against scholarship. I'm against institutionalised scholarship. There are two forms of skills in society. One is codified in the university, which is the stupid form. One is embedded in society, which is the smart form.

"People don't realise that in England, intellectual production dropped enormously when they relied on universities. Amateurs introduced science. Darwin was an amateur scientist. The amateur doesn't cheat; he's not in it for the title... Which is why I try to avoid the university. In my library I don't play games. I follow my sense of what makes me feel good in the evening.

- Interview with Nassim Taleb

Quote of the Year 2014

We know at the present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on. And while many plays are, so to speak, a school for the proper behavior of the young in mature life, there are others which, apart from their utilitarian purposes, are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an excess of forces—“the joy of life,” and a desire to communicate in some way or another with other individuals of the same or of other species—in short, a manifestation of sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of all the animal world.

- What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun? (or Do Animals Have Fun?)

Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, & Vice Versa

When the brain fires up the network of neurons that allows us to empathize, it suppresses the network used for analysis, a pivotal study led by a Case Western Reserve University researcher shows.
How could a CEO be so blind to the public relations fiasco his cost-cutting decision has made?
When the analytic network is engaged, our ability to appreciate the human cost of our action is repressed.

At rest, our brains cycle between the social and analytical networks. But when presented with a task, healthy adults engage the appropriate neural pathway, the researchers found.
The study shows for the first time that we have a built-in neural constraint on our ability to be both empathetic and analytic at the same time.

The work suggests that established theories about two competing networks within the brain must be revised. More, it provides insights into the operation of a healthy mind versus those of the mentally ill or developmentally disabled.

"This is the cognitive structure we've evolved," said Anthony Jack, an assistant professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve and lead author of the new study. "Empathetic and analytic thinking are, at least to some extent, mutually exclusive in the brain."

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Why Does Immortality Still Beckon?

Let us call this ‘cultural reproduction’. By dying young, Achilles and James Dean gave up opportunities to reproduce biologically, but successfully managed to reproduce themselves culturally – and on a grand scale. Countless images of both, from marble busts to film reels, have populated the world like an army of clones.

This might not seem like real immortality to a skeptic – such as the comedian Groucho Marx, who asked: ‘Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?’ Indeed, when we think about it, it seems that posterity has not done much for us, and won’t do even if we populate it with statues of ourselves. But that is only when we think about it. The underlying urge to reproduce in the cultural realm comes from a place much deeper than thought. When we reflect on it, the spell is briefly broken, but it beguiles us again as soon as we stop our reflecting. This is, I believe, because our compulsion to seek renown – to culturally reproduce – is built into our brains.

It is, however, a kind of by-product, a clash of pre-historic instincts with advanced cultures. In other words, we are willing to die for glory because of a cognitive blip. Or, to quote another 1980s hit, by the Smiths: ‘Fame, fame, fatal fame/It can play hideous tricks on the brain.’

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Homer himself, however, takes a much darker view. Having described in great detail the bloodshed of the Trojan War, he has the hero Odysseus descend to Hades to visit the spirits of his dead comrades. There he meets Achilles, who he believes must be revelling in his renown as the most celebrated of heroes. But no: ‘do not you make light of death, illustrious Odysseus,’ Achilles replies, ‘I would rather work the soil as a serf to some landless peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead.’ So it was all for nothing – as Homer hopes we will learn from Achilles’ lesson.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Cheaters never prosper, we tell ourselves. But the ape in us knows it's not true. Clumsy, untutored, cheats never prosper. They are discovered and suffer the consequences [...]But what we apes despise is the clumsiness of their effort, the ineptness, the gaucherie. The ape in us does not despise the cheating itself...

- Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

The Imitation Game

Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

Please go see this movie. We have already stepped into an AI era and it would help the gray matter to learn a thing or two about the history and sacrifices made by many to make this possible.

Seriously !! In the grand scheme of things, who the hell is the Queen of England  to "pardon" Turing? That apology by Gordon Brown was more appropriate for starters. Monarchist act in 2013 was one of the many vivid proofs that we, humans have made little progress.

But yet, we made progress and there was that sweet sensation of payback when Tim Cook, the CEO of worlds largest and most innovative computer company came out this year and said:

For years, I’ve been open with many people about my sexual orientation. Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I’m gay, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the way they treat me. Of course, I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences. Not everyone is so lucky.

While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.

Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.

“For him, breaking the Enigma was much easier than the problem of dealing with other people, especially with those holding power.”

- Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film "The Imitation Game"

Quote of the Day

There is no evidence that the complete head shaves we did in the past, which made the patients look like convicts, had any effect on infection rates, which had been the ostensible reason for doing them. I suspect the real – albeit unconscious – reason was that dehumanizing the patients made it easier for the surgeons to operate.

- Henry Marsh, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

Wisdom Of The Year 2014

"I clambered up to my attic where, during 6 entire months, I spent 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, immersed in probability theory, numerical analysis, and mathematical statistics."

- That's Nassim Taleb in the preface of his book, Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options

That probably sounds mundane and non-exotic but that's the only way to get deep into a subject and master it. Meditate on an idea to master it and master an idea to meditate it. That simple wisdom has stood the test of time.

Quote of the Day

You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.

- Seneca, On the Shortness of Life