Monthly Archive for January, 2008

I’m currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan. I know I will have to read it at least 3 times before I get the whole idea and even then, I’m not quite sure I will get it straight.

It’s the kind of book that totally changes the way you view and understand the world when you’ve read it. I’ll comment once I’m actually done with it.

Just wanted to quote a few lines, before I forget, which will probably change the way I view and understand my own little self:

(…) Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say “I don’t know.” He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean that he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will call an epistemocracy. The major modern epistemocrat is Montaigne. (…)

Now, that really speaks to me! And it sounds smarter than “shy”, “introverted” or “unsociable”…