The main concerns of the blog will be politics, philosophy, law, and economics. I am hoping that there will be contributions from a range of writers, though my focus will be primarily with the first two.
I would like to say that this blog will filter out some of the sound from the noise, but sadly that would be a vain hope. Why? It is my firm conviction that most of what passes for news is little more than entertainment, and most commentary and analysis upon it is no more consequential than debating the latest twists and turns in a soap opera. Thus I invite any and all readers to regard my commentary and opinion as nothing more than the extension of a noisy and random narrative. It is for this reason that I regard myself as not fooled by randomness, but merely charmed by it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Why 'Charmed by Randomness'
It's a reference to the book Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb argues that most market data, news and current affairs, commentary, or what have you, is nothing more than random noise which is misinterpreted as meaningful sound.
After a major political or economic event, everyone is quick to pick out that part of the noise that looks like it was predicting the event. But in fact, he argues, this is just the hindsight fallacy. You could compare most analysis, he suggests, to the "Sharpshooter" who fires shots at a barn door, and then AFTERWARDS draws a target around the greatest concentration of hits.
He advises his readers not to read a daily newspaper, and not to watch their stocks and share's with a hawk's eye, since this will just increase the amount of noise they are exposed to, and make it even harder for them to sort out the substantive from the ephemeral.
Much as I would love to put his advice into place, I'm too much of a news junkie to do it. Thus I can't hope to escape my fixation with randomness - but I am aware that it's noise rather than sound that I'm dealing with.
Given this, I'd like to think I'm not really fooled by randomness - but I am certainly charmed, not to say fixated, with it.
I am interested in your view that “analysis upon (news) is no more consequential than debating the latest twists and turns in a soap opera”. If that is the case, your analysis here amounts to no more than debating and commentating upon the debating and commentating (upon the latest twists and turns in a soap opera)! If you are suggesting that we should question what we classify as ‘news’ then I am in complete agreement and whilst I concur with your ‘hindsight fallacy’ non causa pro causa argument as to what passes as analysis, I have seen nothing here that challenges that orthodoxy. I have read nothing (and your two articles to date are interesting) that would generate cognitive dissonance in the minds of the bien pensants mindset and that departs significantly from established, mainstream analysis. To survive and thrive as an independent blog may I suggest a more controversial, iconoclastic approach? I will respond to your two articles in turn later, to try and clarify what I am trying to convey but in a microcosm I believe you are too conventional (& probably the ‘victim’ of a modern education). Much of what is written in the public realm amounts to a very public form of self catharsis rather than what purports to be a genuine quest for truth. Which, Sir applies to CBR?
I think you've set me up with a false opposition there.
Post a Comment