‘If it’s not simple, it’s suspicious’
Joe, if it’s not simple, it’s suspicious — Gilly And it was Gilly who invited me and some friends to speak on a Zoom Event last year. We were sharing our personal religious and spiritual journeys for a group called SIP, which stands for ‘Spirituality in the Pub.’ All these SIP members listening in were middle-aged and elderly — most of them had some sort of Christian background, yet the conversations they have are totally open and very often multi-faith. They’re not conservative, they’re real, and this struck me from the outset. So the three of us told our stories, openly, holding nothing
Explaining The U-Curve of Certainty
So after reflecting on a lot of Nassim Taleb ideas, and a fair bit of my own philosophy, I’ve arrived at this general U-Curve of Certainty Theory. The hope is that it helps us find the truth when speaking about complex systems (What’s a complex system? See my definition here) and avoid ‘The Weatherman Phenomenon — how smart people become dumber, while looking smarter.’ The idea in a nutshell is this — I can be very certain about things that are Micro (smaller in scope), specific/individualised and imminent, and also about things which are very Macro, general and long-term, but not much
Complex, Complicated and Simple Systems — understanding the levels of Reality.
This is part one of a series of posts around the ‘U-Curve of Certainty’ Theory, which is intended to help people navigate complex systems. Today I will do my best to explain complex systems, and how they interact with simple systems, without boring you half to death. What’s a complex system? A complex system is ‘a system composed of many components which may interact with each other’ (thank you Wikipedia). Examples include climate, human beings and markets… at the end of this post, I list even more. You cannot control or predict exactly what sort of person your child will be in the future, nor
The Weatherman Phenomenon — How smart people become dumber, while looking smarter.
Is there a bigger fraudster in society than he who presumes to predict the weather? Let's unpack that today, building on what we first discussed with the U-Curve of Certainty Theory and complex systems. An angry rant about Weathermen (or Weather People, to be more PC). It was New Year’s Eve. I can’t remember the year, what I can remember is the weather forecast — the weatherman said there was a ‘0% chance of rain.’ Not 2%, not 1%, but 0%. You can probably see where this is going. Come New Year’s Eve, it rained. What a bizarre profession, where you can get away with
Dear Mitchell
Dearest brother Mitchell. I mean to tell you that your selfishness and stupidity knows no bounds. Here’s a picture of us when we were young — who’d have thought one of us would grow up to be such a narcissist, such a self-serving twat. What do you mean ‘who?’ Fine then, I’ll spell it out for you. Where will I begin? At the start then, because I don’t know how much you don’t know, and I can only hope that I get something very important through to you with this letter. So let’s see… the start. Oh yes. Well, you are second born