I was holding off for a special piece on the levels of knowledge/decision making one can operate on, but I was tempted to jump the gun by a fresh example of this concept being put to work by Nassim Taleb. It was just too juicy to pass up.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably have already been aggravated by more than one of my bizarre-sounding, counterintuitive and “obviously nonsensical” tweets and retweets.
Here is a recent sampling of what I am referring to (I’m not embedding the tweets or the attribution to keep this short and sweet; you can find the originals by using your brain):
- When the Romans said AMAT VICTORIA CURAM, they weren’t talking about planning.
- Women love men who love women. Can I possibly make this any clearer?
- Say less.
- The only way we have to truly “know” reality is to become it.
- That is the only way Nature operates – against itself.
- Don’t ask for permission.
- To find contentment, find out who you are.
- I love cheesecake. I just don’t eat it.
- It’s better only if people use it.
- If nothing matters, then it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter.
- Things are not what they seem to be, nor are they otherwise.
- Perhaps the most pervasive & destructive delusion in the world is that you need to have the information in order to make good decisions.
- Consensus is a euphemism for wrong.
- The more complex the strategy, the less it is a strategy,
- (Blood in the game.) Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
- Don’t be poor.
- The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.
I can go on and on, but by now you probably get the pattern. Meanwhile, I am on the record as saying that every single tweet on my timeline is intended and designed to be useful for my followers. So what the living hell??
While it can sound like incomprehensible drivel, each statement has a very direct implication for action/decision making without much need for analysis. These are examples of what I provisionally call “authentic knowledge” – knowledge that arises from and drives Right Action. That’s why we could also call it “action knowledge”. AK is distinct from experiential knowledge because it is not arising just from experience/survival. And it certainly isn’t the type of “knowledge” you can get from textbooks. (I’m intentionally not unpacking any of the statements above.)
If you know anything about classical logic or mathematics, you will have noticed from Nassim Taleb’s technical papers and books that he is a rigorous thinker. One of his particularly infuriating qualities is that he thinks in dynamic systems (“parables”) rather than linear progressions (“stories”).
This quality of his possibly triples or quintuples his obnoxiousness to the sort of people he terms “imbeciles” because they are blind to this type of reasoning. They see non sequiturs, lapses or empty space where he builds branches and interconnections. Among other emotional responses, these perceptions trigger fear because they appear as uncertainty to the misperceiver (hence some of the extra aggravation and obnoxiousness).
Some hours ago, Nassim volunteered on Twitter that he is not doing any press promotion for his new book “Skin in the Game” and not giving books to reviewers except in France. His stated justification for that decision is to “verify that the Media is something of the past”. Observe the double entendre here. Is he doing an empirical test or is he taking directed action?
Maybe even he didn’t and still doesn’t “know” the answer in the ordinary sense of the word. Yet this is his authentic reason for his choice (we assume he is not lying). He is not confused or uncertain.
This framing is just the appetizer to what comes next – and it’s not squid ink!
Asked why he is making an exception for France, he explains it with his liking of foie gras. If you are steeped in (and blinded by) “Western” philosophy and logic, you will see this statement as nonsense. “The guy doesn’t want to explain why he’s giving the French special treatment, so he’s making a joke.” This interpretation can be absolutely accurate, and still miss more than half of what he’s likely saying. In his “authentic knowledge”, giving the French a special pass can be 100% sensibly justified by his enjoyment of their delicacies. It’s a perfectly good reason!
A different way to frame this comes from marketing psychology. If you are familiar with the persuasion books of Robert Cialdini, you will have heard of the fake “because” that can be used to induce compliance without any sensible reason. For example: “You should follow me on Twitter because you enjoy coffee and other delicious beverages.” (Obviously my channel is not about coffee.) You can think of “authentic knowledge” as the reverse of the fake “because”. AK is the “unfake” because which is not necessarily obvious from the outside but “makes sense” to and drives individual action.
If you follow Taleb’s public appearances and read his books, you will see that he uses the unfake because profusely. This unabashed authenticity is a core reason why he can be savage with his detractors and totally get away with being a monumental asshole.