Knowing when Accuracy Matters


Accurate understanding of the situation. A view that maps with reality. That’s what we want in those who prescribe or decide policies. It’s also the reason many have contempt for academia, writes Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, Skin in the Game:
“In academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world, there is.”
But reality is messy, as Thomas Huxley pointed out ages back:
“Many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.”
Interventional-ism, the tendency to act and “fix” things, often leads to unmitigated disasters. Think Iraq. Taleb explains the problem with the interventional way of thinking:
1)      “They think in statics, not dynamics”: Or as a famous military general once said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”.
2)     “They think in low, not high, dimensions”: The number of variables that impact an idea are numerous. After a point, trying to factor in for all of them becomes impossible. So the theoretician starts ignoring them, which comes to bite him later.
3)     “They think in terms of actions, not interactions”: In the real world, the other side acts and reacts, something rarely factored in.
All of which is why Taleb says:
“Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk.”
He allows for some exceptions though: art, maths and poetry, fields that “do not make explicit claims of fitting reality”.

Kathryn Schulz certainly agrees with Taleb’s exceptions in her awesome book, Being Wrong:
“(Poetry is about) rejecting certainty, deliberately exploring ambiguity and error… (it is) about disruption, reinvention, and pleasure.”
On “willing suspension of disbelief”, the necessary pre-requisite for enjoying fiction, she says:
“We consent to believe, albeit temporarily, in something we know to be false. What we expect to receive in exchange is pleasure… Under normal circumstances, we don’t relish the anxiety of not knowing, but when it comes to art, we are veritable suspense junkies.”

There is a place for the demand for accuracy, and a place where it would kill all the fun. When we confuse one with the other is when the trouble starts.

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