![]() “If you say nothing, it is difficult for someone to get it wrong.” If any aspects of that essay make you uncomfortable, why? 5. The question of “What do you think of God?”, however, is one that allows you to update your beliefs as your experiences shift.Īs is probably evident to folks that know me, I’m not a strong believer in binary or yes/no thinking, so it’s probably no surprise that this essay appealed.ĭo this: Think about where you land on the spectrum. The question of “Do you believe in God?” is one that caters to rigid certainty. In this post he presents his interpretation of philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s god, and a spectrum ranging from atheist to theist with an assortment of interesting observations in between. God Is a Spectrum of Being – Lawrence Yeo – (More to That newsletter / blog)Ĭan’t accuse Lawrence of shying away from the big issues. PS: since this was also a fairly long book with a quirky style that might get in some reader’s way, I did find this reasonable summary: An Executive Summary of the Black Swan. However “maximizing the serendipity” is something that I can absolutely get behind, and consider it more responsible for my own good fortune than what most would label as “luck”.ĭo this: ummm. The book at points reads like a not-so-subtle rant against institutions from the Nobel prize on down. (Well, that and clear feeling of his own theories being undervalued by academia, and academia’s failings in general. Randomness is Taleb’s thing, and our unwillingness to acknowledge it or factor it into what plans we do make is his frustration. Honestly this takeaway is the closest thing I was able to cull from the book as to what to do about the fundamental unpredictability of. OK, now that I’ve finished the book, here’s my uber-short summary: ![]() In the entrepreneurial world, it’s important to realize that there are many, many more failures than successes, and they’re all instrumental, vying for continued existence.ĭo this: there is education in the choice of what is to be destroyed. “Winning” is nothing more than being allowed to survive. ![]() But it does so not by rewarding the victors, but by (sometimes ruthlessly) eliminating the losers. We often think of evolution as a positive force moving forward, and it is. “Evolution does not work by teaching, but destroying.”Īnother nugget that got my attention. I’m hoping that he’ll end his rant with “OK, now, here are some concrete steps to take as a result of what I’ve laid out.” We’ll see.ĭo this: watch carefully for your own confirmation bias and preconceived notions. I won’t summarize the book just yet (I have a very snarky, short summary in mind), but I want to finish it first. But then I stumble into another nugget, like the one above, and I slog through. I’ll be honest, I’ve come close to giving up on this book several times – in many ways it’s Taleb’s lengthy rant against even the mere thought of being able to “predict” anything, crossing all boundaries from finance, to math, to philosophy and more. Remember that we treat ideas like possessions, and it will be hard for us to part with them. When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate. The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds-so those who delay developing their theories are better off. The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – Nassim Nicholas Taleb – (audio & ebook)
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