All Life Is Problem Solving

Recently, I’ve been having a good bit of fun with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan, a book I’ve been meaning to read for awhile but only recently have gotten to. Taleb’s book is mainly about the difficulty of predicting the future due to the weakness (partially based in evolution) in human abilities to predict the occurrence of “Black Swans,” or “unknown unknowns.” Taleb’s writing style is engaging. I would characterize it as that of an erudite “smart aleck” (I’m from New York, and I love smart alecks, so I don’t intend this pejoratively) frequently delivering humorous parting shots at the end of paragraphs and also elegant paragraph-long rants and diatribes against “conventional wisdom” and common practices in the social sciences with a strong emphasis on economics. “Black Swans” (pp. xvii-xviii) are events with three attributes. First, they are “outliers” in the sense that they fall outside of the realm of common expectations. Second, they carry an extreme impact. Third, even though they are outliers, after they occur human nature makes us formulate explanations for them so we make them explainable and “predictable” retrospectively. Examples of “Black Swans” might include such events as the rise of Hitler, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Enron scandal, World War I, the stock market collapse of 1987, the current crisis in the world financial system, the length of modern wars, and the Harry Potter books, to name several.

Taleb’s book is rich with insights that could fuel many discussions. Edna Pasher, in the context of the AOK forum, cites Drucker’s view that: “we cannot predict the future, but we can create it!” Taleb’s work certainly supports the first half of that sentence, and suggests our need to moderate our arrogance about the efficacy of our knowledge in guiding our actions. But having said that I think we need to think through ideas that deny predictability very carefully.

First, if we couldn’t predict successfully at all, could we live? Isn’t it the case that there are many, many things that we predict quite successfully, and that this ability is actually the foundation for our ability to create the future?

Second, when we say we can’t predict the future don’t we really mean that we ought to be skeptical about our expectations in certain areas, and to recognize that our expectations may not come to pass?

Third, can we act without expectations entirely? Or are we built in such a way, that in any social situation, action and expectation are always bound together?

Fourth, some conceptual frameworks, Dave Snowden’s Cynefin comes to mind, specify chaotic and also complex states of social systems or organizations, and contrast them with ordered and sometimes ‘deterministic” states of systems, by saying that the chaotic and complex states are unpredictable, while the ordered states allow prediction. While I think there’s something to distinctions like this, are there really any social systems or organizations in which we cannot predict at all?

In the end, even though I think it is good to emphasize the difficulties in prediction and to talk as Taleb does about the very non-linear nature of “real life” and the importance of trying to turn “Black Swans” into “Gray Swans” by opening ourselves up to “unknown unknowns,” heretofore unconsidered possible events, and alternative models, it’s also important to remember that many of our predictions work and that we can only create new and unpredictable things at all because there are some things that work for us.