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Nary a post goes by when I don't feel compelled to share a relevant book.
I'd like to propose a collective recommended reading list,
and in beginning this list I'll paraphrase the first page
of my first recommendation.
It's from a book called "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Many people, when they see an immense personal library, are tempted to say something like "WOW! ...how many of those have you read?!" While a small minority will get the point that a library is not an ego boosting appendage, but a research tool. Your library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means will allow you to put there. As you grow older, the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
We tend to treat knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It's an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So the tendency to offend the "Antilibrary" sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don't walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it's the job of their competitors to do that,) but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. We misunderstand the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.
Let us call an antischolar —someone who focuses on the unread books, and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a posession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device— a skeptical empiricist.
I'd like to propose a collective recommended reading list,
and in beginning this list I'll paraphrase the first page
of my first recommendation.
It's from a book called "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Many people, when they see an immense personal library, are tempted to say something like "WOW! ...how many of those have you read?!" While a small minority will get the point that a library is not an ego boosting appendage, but a research tool. Your library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means will allow you to put there. As you grow older, the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
We tend to treat knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It's an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So the tendency to offend the "Antilibrary" sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don't walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it's the job of their competitors to do that,) but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. We misunderstand the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.
Let us call an antischolar —someone who focuses on the unread books, and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a posession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device— a skeptical empiricist.
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