After reading the book, The Hot Topic (check out my review here), I was encouraged to read more books from a European perspective (I'm still here in Ireland as of this writing). So me and ~myDakini stopped by Eason bookstore yesterday so I could check out new books to read.

"You're addicted to books," ~myDakini said as we passed by the counter.

"Yeah, I am," I said with a proud smirk. "But be thankful I'm addicted to books, and not with booze, drugs, or women!"

"Fine. But you're still addicted to books." She's right.

I went to the new and best sellers section to scout for more books that would peak my curiosity. Most books in front of the store are fiction, celebrity biographies, and cheesy feel-good stories. Europeans (at least here in Ireland) are obsessed with celebrities and stories (judging by the placement of celebrity magazines, biographies, and fiction in bookstores.) I like stories and fiction, but I groove with nonfiction the best. If I want a good story I go to the movies. When I read books I want ideas not stories. Scanning the book section two books grabbed my attention.

The first was Affluenza, by British psychologist Oliver James. This book tackles the "global" social epidemic called, affluenza, which is "a painful, contagious socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." The other book was The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. All I knew about this book was that it's about the Black swan theory (i.e. uncertainty and unpredictability) and that it's popular among LongNow and Edge thinkers. So I picked up the books and paid for it by credit card. Expensive. I wish I were in Seattle right now ordering from Amazon.com instead.

On the way home I felt like I was coming down with a flu. The weather here is still very cold and my body is not good at coping. By the time we got home I already had a runny nose and a slight fever. In the meantime, ~myDakini boiled hot water for my Lemsip medication. Great. This flu is a perfect excuse to stay in bed all day and read my books! I know. Very sleazy. But hey, it works!

So I did nothing but read my books the whole day until past midnight. At first I thought the two books were completely unrelated, but upon reading them in parallel I caught a of glimpse of serendipitous connection. (Note: I often read multiple books in parallel; a few chapters from one book and a few from another. The more engaging the book, the sooner I finish it.)

Here's the serendipitous connection.

So far I have only read the first few chapters of Affluenza, but it is quite clear that James had already made up his conclusion in the Prologue. For James, Selfish Capitalism is the root cause of the Affluenza Virus. James wrote,

"The Affluenza Virus is a set of values which increase our vulnerability to emotional distress. It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous." ....

"...my new theory is that the nasty form of political economy that I call Selfish Capitalism caused an epidemic of the Affluenza Virus, accounting for much of the increase in the distress since the 1970s.

"By Selfish Capitalism I mean four basic things. The first is that the success of business is judged almost exclusively by their current share price. The second is a strong drive to privatise public utilities, such as water, gas and electricity, or in the case of America, to keep them in private hands. The third is that there should be as little regulation of business as possible, with taxation for the rich and very rich so limited that whether to contribute becomes almost a matter of choice. The fourth is the conviction that consumption and market forces can meet human needs of almost every kind. America is that apotheosis of Selfish Capitalism, Denmark the nearest thing to its Unselfish opposite."

(I told you it's interesting to read contemporary books from European perspective. Americans should do this from time to time ;))

In the very beginning of the book (before the Prologue) there is a self test -- "Have you contracted the Affluenza Virus?" -- in which, "If you answered 'yes' to any of the questions, then you have, like most people in the English-speaking world, contracted the Virus. The more you answered 'yes', the more infected you are and the greater your likelihood of becoming emotionally distressed."

I answered 'yes' on the very first statement which is, "I would like to be a very wealthy person." I think this question is very vague and misleading because "very wealthy" is a relative term. For example, for me (who grew up in a developing nation), people who make $200,000 a year, own a car, and a decent house are very wealthy. Multi-millionaires are appallingly wealthy. Billionaires are mindblowingly, appallingly wealthy (with the exception -- on the appallingly -- of Warren Buffett as my ultimate role model of uber-compassionate-wealthiness). Nonetheless, I answered 'yes' and then I answered 'no' on all the remaining questions. This means that by James' definition, I'm mildly infected with the Affluenza Virus. Fine. So be it.

After reading a few engaging chapters of what James called, "mind tour" -- he went around the (industrialized) world interviewing appallingly rich, middle-class, and low-income people, with focus on those who are afflicted by the said Virus -- I switched to The Black Swan. The Prologue of the book is very engaging. I've always been fascinated with uncertainty, chaos (hence my pseudonym), impermanence, and serendipity. In short, the Black swan theory is very appealing to me.

The first chapter of the book is a very short autobiography of the author which put in context his being a "skeptical empiricist." But what I connected with best with the author is his attitude on learning and money. Based on his own account, Nassim Nicholas Taleb is not infected with the Affluenza Virus. Here's how he described what he calls "f*** you money". (emphasis by the author)

"It was hard to tell my friends, all hurt in some manner by the [stockmarket] crash, about this feeling of vindication. Bonuses at the time were a fraction of what they are today, but if my employer, First Boston, and the financial system survived until year-end, I would get the equivalent of a fellowship. This is sometimes called "f*** you money," which in spite of its coarseness, means that it allows you to act like Victorian gentleman, free from slavery. It is a psychological buffer: the capital is not so large as to make you spoiled-rich, but large enough to give you the freedom to choose a new occupation without excessive consideration of the financial rewards. It shields you from prostituting your mind and frees you from outside authority--any outside authority. (Independence is person-specific: I have always been taken aback at they high number of people in whom an astonishingly high income led to additional sycophancy as they became more dependent on their clients and employers and more addicted to making even more money.) While not substantial by some standards, it literally cured me of all financial ambition--it made me feel ashamed whenever I diverted time away from study for the pursuit of material wealth. Note that the designation f*** you corresponds to the exhilarating ability to pronounce that compact phrase before hanging up the phone."

In one paragraph, Taleb eloquently summarized my own attitude towards money. For instance, I'm not too crazy about getting very wealthy. What I actually want is to have f*** you money so that I could provide the needs of my loved ones, spend time with them, while pursuing my interests without fear of financial repercussions. From this perspective, I'd like to think that I'm *not* afflicted with the Affluenza Virus. Then again, I'll revisit this self-assessment after I've read both of these books.

In the meantime, check out these books if you haven't read them yet. I'll post my review as soon as I'm done reading them. I think that it would be interesting to riff on important and polarizing issues, such as health care in America, using the Selfish Capitalism perspective, as well as look at Global Warming using the lens of the Black Swan theory.

"The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy." [read more]

How come Republicans, Democrats, and citizens are not outraged enough to do something about this? I don't know. No wonder Kucinich is calling for Cheney impeachment. I wonder what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would do about this should either of them win the 2008 Presidential election. Who knows?

In the meantime, politicians continue to do battle on the economic cost of (universal) health care and global warming while the U.S. budget bleeds into a black hole of the Iraq war. It's a "Mad World" out there.

This is the topic of the latest Economist debate.

Proposition: If the promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing.

This would depend on one's idea of a "simple life." My idea of a simple life is to have constant access to health care, a simple home to start a family, a dependable laptop, a broadband connection, and a profession where I can work from anywhere.

But technological solutions beget more problems. For example, email simplified sending messages but this resulted in spams. Ubiquitous operating systems vulnerable to computer virus. The rise of Information technology giving way to cyber-terrorism. Advancement in gene sequencing giving way to commercialization and patenting of our own genes. Our over-dependence on fossil fuels is screwing up the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere. And the threat of a nuclear holocaust still looms in our collective horizon.

So as much as I love technology, I would take the Pro side on this one, at least on the "infantile state" of our technology and our slow-to-adapt collective ethics (i.e. bioethics). In short, technology exposed humanity to more Black swans in the horizon, both good and bad.

Ask me again when we've perfected nanotechnology, quantum computing, and when we're able to harness unlimited energy from the Sun.

Thanks to Tim Ferriss for the heads up.

Hillary Clinton makes a comeback by winning Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island. Obama and mainstream media are downplaying her big win (Obama is still leading with delegates).

"Sen. Obama was expected to maintain his significant lead in delegates, in part thanks to the Democrats' allocation rules that tended to favor him, and make it hard for Sen. Clinton to win enough to catch up.

"The ultimate verdict could be rendered in coming days by superdelegates -- the party leaders, members of Congress and governors who can vote for whomever they want. If enough decide that Sen. Clinton can't win the nomination, and that the increasingly contentious rivalry could hurt the party's ultimate nominee against Sen. McCain in November, a critical mass of superdelegates could throw their support to Sen. Obama. Amid yesterday's voting, superdelegate Carol Fowler, South Carolina's Democratic Party Chairman, announced her endorsement of Sen. Obama.

"Sen. Obama started the day with 1,386 delegates to 1,276 for Sen. Clinton, according to the Associated Press. Neither can lock up the 2,025 necessary for victory with only the pledged delegates up for grabs in the remaining primaries and caucuses. That makes the 795 superdelegates potential kingmakers." [read more]

But one thing is for sure: this race just got more exciting. It's not over 'till it's over. See Clinton's victory speech in Ohio.

In the sci-fi novel Permutation City (see my book review here), there is a simulation program called, Autoverse -- "an artificial life simulator ultimately based on cellular automaton complex enough to represent the substratum of an artificial chemistry."

I was reminded by the Autoverse when I read Cosmic Log's report on the latest Microsoft TechFest. Aside from the much awaited WorldWide Telescope, Microsoft research and development team had created a visual programming language called, Stochastic Pi Machine (SPiM), "to help biology researchers analyze how cells do their work. The program can take a tangled chemical pathway and figure out what quantities of which proteins should be produced by that pathway." Using SPiM, researchers "can compare the predicted outcome of a biological process with the actual results of their experiment, to find out if their model for the process is correct. Someday, the simulations might even suggest new strategies for countering cancer or developing new drugs."

Nice. Imagine what people could do with SPiM (and similar future programming languages) once quantum computing has become ubiquitous. Permutation City is becoming an eerie possibility.

Click for video: Msnbc.com's Alan Boyle narrates
animations from Microsoft Research that represent
cellular signaling pathways at work.

Straight from the Father of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. (via Techcrunch)

""I think, it is a very grown-up thing to realize that you are not the only social networking site… otherwise it is like a website which doesn’t have any links out. In the Semantic Web similarly, if you don’t have any links out, well, that’s boring.

"In fact, a lot of the value of many websites is the links out.

"Now if you look at the social networking sites which, if you like, are traditional Web 2.0 social networking sites, they hoard this data. The business model appears to be, “We get the users to give us data and we reuse it to our benefit. We get the extra value.”

"So, first of all, are they going to let people use the data? I think, the push now, as we’ve seen during the last year, has been unbearable pressure from users to say, “Look, I have told you who my friends are. You are the third site I’ve told who my friends are. Now, I’m going to a travel site and now I’m going to a photo site and now I’m going to a t-shirt site. Hello? You guys should all know who my friends are.” . . . So, the users are saying, “Give me my data back. That’s my data.”" (read transcript here)

Exactly! So don't be lazy; link. Don't be greedy; share.

Thanks to Chris G. for the heads up!

Here's the kind of reasoned skeptical argument I prefer to hear on Global Warming. I think John Tierney made an excellent point regarding people's paranoia when it comes to Global Warming Payola. Here's a key quote.

"If readers insist on debating the pecuniary motives of scientists and their patrons, I’d be curious to see figures comparing how much money corporations, foundations and government agencies today give to global-warming skeptics versus how much they give to the other side. Again, I’m not suggesting that the researchers taking this money are corrupt, or that scientists will suppress the truth if it turns out the current prevailing view of climate change is wrong. If contradictions emerge, scientists will debate and revise their theories eventually.

"But it will take longer to figure out what’s happening if dissent is stifled and skeptics are demonized. The skeptics in the minority start off with a disadvantage in getting their message heard simply because of the media’s bias for bad news and horror stories. When there’s a well-financed majority dominating the public debate, I find it odd to hear complaints that anyone else should receive money or attention." [read more]

See also Tierney's notes from the Global Warming Skeptics' conference. As always, follow the links within the links for more context.

I'm glad to see that MSG is getting the respect that it deserves. It really ain't that bad. Case in point: here's an excerpt from an NYTimes article.

"Even now, after “Chinese restaurant syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people), the ingredient has a stigma that will not go away.

"But then, neither will MSG.

"Cooks around the world have remained dedicated to MSG, even though they may not know it by that name. As hydrolyzed soy protein or autolyzed yeast, it adds flavor to the canned chicken broth and to the packs of onion soup mix used by American home cooks, and to the cheese Goldfish crackers and the low-fat yogurts in many lunchboxes." [read more]

I grew up ingesting small amounts of the damn thing. Thanks to my Mom for cooking savory meals. But last time I had a general physical exam I'm so healthy that my physician told me to check back in a couple of years. Although I don't put MSG on my food (I don't cook anyway) I still ingest MSG whether I'm conscious of it (i.e. instant noodles, Knorr flavorings) or unconsciously (eating out at Asian and Southeast Asian restaurants). So what's the big deal with MSG? As usual, sensationalism and hysteria.

Bottom line: When it comes to MSG, or anything in life, moderation is key. And if you're still hysterical of MSG, then avoid eating out and cook your own damn food :)

Are American children really that spoiled nowadays, lacking in curiosity, and have little to no more drive to learn for knowledge's sake that they need to be bribed to study? See NYTimes: Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?

"The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

"When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50." [read more]

This reflects the sad state of the American education system. If there's someone to be rewarded it should be the teachers (i.e. raising their meager salaries), not the spoiled brats in school. We need more and better educators, funding for schools and better programs to improve education, but not an entrainment program for little capitalistic brats teaching them to value money and grades over quenching their intellectual thirst and curiosity.

I find this experiment to be preposterous. No wonder. The idea came from a Harvard economist.

Serendipitously, I'm reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan) right now. Taleb has a very unpleasant view of economists (i.e. see essay The Opiates of the Middle Class). This experiment (i.e. student incentive program) is a case in point why Taleb's antagonistic attitude towards economists is warranted. I think they have to go back to the drawing board and ditch this incentive program before it corrupts young minds.

"Imagine a speck of dust next to planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don't be like an ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking for the gift horse in the mouth -- remember that you are a Black Swan." -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

I started reading two books. But I ended up finishing just one. I just can't put the damn book down. I'm talking about the book, The Black Swan. I felt instant connection with the author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I jive with his philosophy on improbability, no-nonsense "skeptical empiricism" and his audacity. He took me on an intellectual thrill ride into chaos, uncertainty, and serendipity. In this review I will share a portion of that journey.

Taleb started out with a very short autobiographical account (Chapter 1: Apprenticeship of An Empirical Skeptic) to give the reader a sense of where he's coming from -- his roots and cultural background, education, experience, profession, passion. Immediately, I get the sense that I'm not just reading another author. This author is a polymath -- speaks and writes fluently in different languages, is educated with the classics (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic), accomplished mathematician, a proud skeptical empiricist (in the tradition of Sextus Empiricus), had been a trader by profession, and has now dedicated his intellectual life in doing research on chance & improbability. He calls highly improbable events as, Black Swans -- after the discovery of Black swans in Australia wherein prior to that people believed that all swans were "white." A Black Swan event has the following three attributes: "rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability."

The basic thesis of the book is this: Our human tendency to categorize (Platonicity) and explain the causes of everything with theories (narrative fallacy) backed up with partial evidence (confirmation bias; fallacy of silent evidence) while concocting models of reality (ludic fallacy) make us blind to Black Swans.

Sounds like a bunch of philosophical jargons, eh?

But where Taleb really shines is in his style of writing, and his intellectual audacity. As much as he dislikes narratives, he used narrative "for good" -- using literary craft by mixing narrative, semi-autobiographical fiction infused with philosophical, scientific and technical knowledge backed up with empirical research.

Parts 1 and 2 of the book were dedicated to dispel our delusions that we understand reality while disregarding random events. To explain the two problems of randomness, Taleb resorted to metaphors of two worlds:

Mediocristan -- a utopian province dominated by the mediocre (such as economists, politicians, historians, philosophers, and social scientists) where "particular events don't contribute much individually--only collectively." This world represents the soft problem of randomness.

Extremistan -- a scalable world where extreme, unpredictable and highly improbable events occur. This is the world of the Black Swans. This world represents the hard problem of randomness.

According to Taleb, in reality, we all live in Extremistan. What pisses him off is that our economic models, scientific and mathematical tools (i.e. Gaussian Bell Curve--which Taleb calls,"that great intellectual fraud"), politicians, journalists, and even vanguards of knowledge, the philosophers, view and approach our world as if we're living in Mediocristan! In short, we just can't predict extreme random events.

But this book is not all rant. In Part 3, Taleb proposed a solution on how to adapt to the impact of Black Swans, even if we're powerless to predict them. He championed the Mandelbrotian fractals over the Gaussian model because fractal representation is a more useful way of approximating randomness. With the Mandelbrotian factals, "We can turn these Black Swans into Gray Swans... reducing their surprise effect."

"Fractals should be the default, the approximation, the framework. They do not solve the Black Swan problem and do not turn all Black Swans into predictable events, but they significantly mitigate the Black Swan problem by making such large events conceivable." (p. 262)

That is the gist of his (technical) solution, specifically for economic, political, and scientific domains in the business of "prediction", or forecasting.

When it comes to the practical and personal domain, I ride with his philosophy.

"Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding the world." (p. 133)

"...have the integrity to deliver your "because" very sparingly; try to limit it to situations where the "because" is derived from experiments, not backward-looking history." (p. 120)

"...be human! Accept that being human involves some amount of epistemic arrogance in running your affairs. Do not be ashamed of that. Do not try to always withhold judgment -- opinions are the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting -- yes, after this diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places. What you should avoid is unnecessary dependence of large-scale harmful predictions -- those and only those." (p. 203)

"...be prepared! Narrow-minded prediction has an analgesic or therapeutic effect. Be aware of the numbing effect of magic numbers. Be prepared for all relevant eventualities." (p. 203)

"Put yourself in situations where favorable consequences are much larger than unfavorable ones." (p. 210)

In short, "maximize the serendipity around you." I like that. Very Zen. As regular and long-time readers of this blog already know, I'm a sucker for serendipity ;)

However, my gripe with Taleb is not what he's written in the book, but what was left unsaid. Although he cited the 1987 stock market crash (this single event vindicated him when he was still in the trading profession), 9/11, and World War II as examples of Black Swans, I feel that he intentionally left out the biggest and most controversial Black Swan of all: Global Warming. There was no mention of it in the book. I think Taleb avoided this controversial topic since his book is already controversial in the domain of business and economics. Adding the controversy of Global Warming will only take away the attention from his main point. And besides, Global Warming is a long-term predicted event that had already sunk in the collective consciousness of masses. It's a Black Swan either way -- the prediction coming to pass, or *not* coming to pass.

In any case, due to Taleb's withholding of opinion on Global Warming, I can only speculate that, with his distrust of models and narratives, he  would fall on the Michael Crichton side of the Global Warming debate spectrum. Crichton's argument on nonlinearity, unpredictability, and unreliability of global climate models fit well with Taleb's thesis (see Crichton's interview with Charlie Rose). Simply put, on the topic of Global Warming, compared to Crichton, Taleb's audaciousness (or in this case, foolishness) didn't live up to my expectation.

But I still like the guy. After reading the book, I found an intellectual hero in Taleb. I groove with his skeptical empiricism, and his no-nonsense philosophizing. However, this somewhat puts me in a state of cognitive dissonance since I also have an affinity with Ken Wilber's integral philosophy (aka AQAL) which "explains" events and perspectives via a meta-map called, Four Quadrants. I wonder how Taleb would receive integral theory. Would he consider this as another instance of Platonicity? Or will he groove with it, like me? Likewise, what is the place of randomness and uncertainty within the integral model? Based on my understanding, even randomness is included in the integral model (i.e. philosophy of "oops"). However, Wilber's propensity is to map out models and do extemporaneous narration based on those models. So I suspect that there would be an intellectual clash between Taleb and Wilber. This remains to be seen. But consider these quotes from Taleb and you'll get an idea where he stands when it comes to grand sweeping theories.

"The way to avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy is to favor experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories.... Being empirical does not mean running a laboratory in one's basement: it is just a mind-set that favors a certain class of knowledge over others." (p. 84)

"I care more about premises more than theories, and I want to minimize reliance on theories, stay light on my feet, and reduce my surprises. I want to be broadly right rather than precisely wrong. Elegance in the theories is often indicative of Platonicity and weakness--it invites you to seek elegance for elegance's sake. A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal. So it needs to be used with care, moderation, and close adult supervision." (p. 285)

Bottom line: this book is a must-read. It's a literary crash course on the uncertainty in economics, science, politics, and philosophy, all rolled into one. When I picked up the book I didn't know it was the #1 Highest Selling Nonfiction book in 2007 on Amazon. So there goes another serendipity. This book is, literally, a Black Swan.

Finally, upon reading the book, this classic Rumsfeld quote ceased to be funny; it actually makes sense.

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are "known knowns"; there are things we know we know. We also know there are "known unknowns"; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also "unknown unknowns" — the ones we don't know we don't know."

Here's to chaos, uncertainty, and serendipity!